The Principles of Democracy

Avatar: Anti-Military and Pro-Ecoterrorism?

2010-01-21T07:17:00.001-07:00

I’ve been reading several places where people are in an uproar over the movie Avatar—one of the highest-grossing films of all time, in spite of its release only one month ago. The issue is that several notable conservatives seem to think that this fictional film is promoting a message that ecoterrorism is justified, and giving an anti-military message as well.

I can see their point. But I don’t agree with it. I certainly can’t see that anything particularly terrorist was done in the film (though defense of themselves through the destruction of a camera seemed reasonable to me, given the circumstances in the film, even if there might be a later price to pay). The “military” forces in the film were clearly no longer in the military—they were wash-outs and misfits, hired by a corporation. To me, this isn’t anti-military, but rather a call to responsible activity by those who hire security personnel which are too aggressive.

Other lessons I think I saw:

Money tends to be too much the focus of what people want, to the exclusion of moral thought—and this leads to confrontations over money.
Our historical treatment of the native peoples of many lands (not just North America) tends to be more savage than the “savages” are. Some of this was necessary; most of it was not.
When we see a connection to something, it is nearly impossible to un-see it.
When people learn true principles, it is difficult also to fail to see the truth.
Actions speak louder than words.

There is a long list of others, but these seem to be the best of the lot. So, what about the anti-corporate message?

This is certainly a part which is present, but it’s less anti-corporate than it is pro-responsibility. A responsible corporation which is accountable to the public interest should see that there is more at stake than their bottom line. The people in the film were no more or less evil than the executives at AT&T who conspired to tap hundreds of millions of telephones without a warrant, or no more or less evil than those who seek to eliminate all competition in the marketplace, rather than to allow a true free market. They are no more or less evil than corporate executives who seek to corrupt Washington politicians by ensuring that their own interests are served above those of the population.

Money is really the focus of business, and people can’t seem to live without it. So, it’s true that money is important. But there are also other things to consider. For example, we should consider the reasons for obtaining money in the first place: we need to live, to support family and self, and to address our obligations to others. Without these reasons, of what purpose is money? Money is certainly important, but it’s far from the most important thing, and far too many people focus on it as their top priority.

The next time you’re with someone you love, consider the money it takes to spend time with them. Money itself is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. When we die, money is pointless to have in our possession. It is left to those who are still living.

And yet we tend to take the position that everyone is really too focused on currency, at the same time scrambling to make ends meet, worrying about the economy instead of finding ways to create new jobs for those around us, and in all ways finding excuses not to have to work.

Which brings me to another lesson learned by the film: fiscal responsibility. The line about unobtainium (nice name, by the way) being “twenty million a kilo” is one of those expository lines which shows just how invaluable life itself is.

There are more important things than money. But how many people can honestly say that they put those things first?

That’s the real lesson: putting what is truly important as one’s first priority is the fastest way to earn opposition. And that’s why the film is so highly rated by the population. It’s not so much that people identify with ecoterrorist activities, or that they are against corporations, or even that life itself is more important than money. It’s that people who actually have their priorities in line are often the first people to get assassinated.

We think of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and even people who aren’t dead yet, and how they each influence our thinking, but how the opposition despised them! The only way to be rid of them was to silence them forever. Today, we don’t kill them, we merely arrange a gossip column to scandalize them.

In a free republican democracy, the expressions of others show how our principles operate. They show what we truly value by action, and this can allow us to correct those values.

But the value we should respect most of all is that of the freedom to think. I don’t criticize these ultra-conservatives for believing as they do; nor the ultra-liberals for saying that perhaps the movie could have illustrated the point more plainly. To both, I merely point out the box office figures and say: “You’re wrong. The public perception is satisfied with this, the correct principle of conservationism.”

A conservative value in itself, responsibility depends on achieving and maintaining the moral high ground, not in merely maintaining power at all costs. This was the point of the American Revolution in the 1760’s and 1770’s, it was the point of the US Civil War in the 1860’s, and it was the point of the militia groups in the 1990’s. We simply cannot stand by and watch all of our future resources go to waste; neither can we strip all of the resources from an area and expect to survive. And survival is the key—not money, not politics, not even law itself. This is why democracy was invented: when the survival instincts of the population speak, it is with a voice so powerful that very little short of death itself can stop them.

But unless all life is ended, an idea can never be killed.

Iran Interior Ministry Letter

2009-06-18T15:13:00.002-06:00

A disturbing letter from the Iran Interior Ministry may have surfaced, but until its authenticity is verified, it might not actually be official.

The letter's content is as follows:

Salaam Aleikum

Regarding your concerns for the 10th presidential elections and due to your orders for Mr Ahmadinejad to be elected President, in this sensitive time, all matters have been organized in such a way that the results of the election will be in line with the revolution and the Islamic system. The following result will be declared to the people and all planning should be put in force to prevent any possible action from the opposition, and all party leaders and election candidates are under intense surveillance.Therefore, for your information only, I am telling you the actual results as follows:

A total of 42,036,078 votes were cast.

Mirhoussein Mousavi: 19,075,623

Mehdi Karroubi: 13,387,104

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 5,968,417

Mohsen Resaee: 3,754,218

No valid vote: 38,716

Signed on behalf of the minister:

X

As an interesting note, the total on these numbers is 42,224,078—exceeding the total count given by exactly 188,000. This kind of a mathematical error would indicate problems with the count to begin with. However, as a letter which transmits the number 188,000 it might be perfect.

Mohammad Asgari, the IT network security supervisor for Iran’s interior ministry, was reported to have leaked results that showed the elections were rigged, and that Mousavi had won “almost 19 million votes” (direct quote), and that he should be president. Asgari was killed in Tehran 5 days after the election.

Sources within Iran are saying that it’s most certainly a fake: for example: almost all official documents begin not with Salaam Aleikum (“God’s peace be upon you”), but with Besmeh Taali (“In the name of the Most High”), a way of invoking God’s name without putting it at risk of being destroyed.The tone of the letter is also described as being informal in nature, which would be at odds with an official report. This is not to say that an official document of this nature could not exist; but there are enough questions being raised about this document’s authenticity that it will be difficult to assess. We want to believe, but is it safe to?

As this develops, more information will be forthcoming. Although Mousavi is not a friend of the United States, the people here in the US are more concerned with keeping the process of democracy going than we are with which leader wins the election. We support democracy in Iran!

NOTE: Special thanks to those on Twitter who have messaged me in private, as well as those who have relayed information through other channels. I’m adding a Twitter widget to the right.

Iran’s Political Turmoil

2009-06-17T03:39:00.003-06:00

In a vote, where the will of the people is supposed to prevail, the system of voting is essential to the processes which keep the will of the people in power. Stealing, rigging, or otherwise cheating elections might get someone some temporary power, but in the end the people will have their voices heard.

In the past couple of days, the result of the elections in Iran has been enlightening. But of import is not what’s happening now—which will certainly resolve itself, for good or ill—but in the crackdown on freedoms of speech which occurred prior to the elections. They started by blocking Facebook, only to reinstate it within hours. Then they tried to block SMS messaging (which everyone who texts on their phone should be familiar with). They tried to block (or possibly jam) BBC Persia. People don’t like to be stifled; once they realize that they can be heard, they get a taste for free speech. It’s a bit like offering purified water: everything else is a pale comparison once you taste it.

Democracy itself is the reason for the Iranian turmoil. While we cannot possibly know what Iran is going through without being there, the pictures which have been leaked seem to paint a fairly clear picture of political unrest. The will of the people will be decided. These people appear ready for change. We shall see.

Politicians and activists were arrested. The Basij militia (loyal to the incumbent) fired into a crowd, striking one man in the neck. Protesters attacked a group of militia and set their motorcycles aflame. Eight protesters were killed on June 15th. Molotov cocktails burn in the streets. University dormitories have been raided. The press has been prohibited from leaving their offices, in particular the foreign press. And through it all, civil liberties are suspended or chilled.

This is starting to look more like a civil war than it is anything else. Let’s all pray that it doesn’t come to that.

UPDATE: Special thanks @ernestina@Twitter for the photos:

Protesters are turning out for peaceful protest in the tens of thousands!

Leaders in Iran BUSTED Photoshopping

Marriage, Government, and Privacy

2009-06-11T23:03:00.002-06:00

It's another long one, folks.

Just so that we’re clear on one point: I’m a straight man. For me, the right thing is a man-woman relationship. But I also recognize the importance of the legal protections that marriage provides, and I’m against banning same-sex marriages on the grounds of one’s right to privacy. This isn’t to say that I’m pro-gay or anti-gay, but that I’m anti-interference on the part of the government. Government might be served with registering marriage in order to prevent harm, but sanctioning marriage on the part of the government encroaches on the civil liberty of privacy.

California passed Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages after the Mormon Church pressured the population to vote in a given way (something I take personal issue with, as this activity was in direct violation of the laws which are intended to prevent churches, as powerful organizations which have an enormous amount of influence, from involvement in politics). Iowa and most of New England will have same-sex marriages within the year if they don’t have it already. With this specifically in mind, I’ve been giving thought to the issue.

While I was at first against the idea of controlling marriage, I didn’t know why. Over the course of many weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that allowing or disallowing marriage by the government is against the founding ideas of democracy—it’s an invasion of privacy for government to do anything which seeks to limit or promote marriages (though preventing harm is another matter, which I’ll get into later).

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996 is ultimately to blame for the current controversy. In that act, marriage is defined as the legal union of one man and one woman, though it permits individual states to adopt their own stances. DOMA provides only the Federal Government’s stance. It ultimately circumvents the right for consenting adults to legally commit themselves to one another.

Many insurance companies already protect unmarried couples who live together under a family-style policy—not because they have to, but because it’s just good business. Interestingly enough, this point may show that the ability to commit on the part of these individuals is somewhat more limited and less stable. Conversely, they are also under a great deal more pressure.

The issue of same-gender marriages is also an issue where heterosexual couples are concerned. The sanctity of marriage hasn’t been an issue in decades, because heterosexual couples will get married at the drop of a hat without caring whether or not religious groups approve. Those who choose cohabitation without marriage are afforded some rights, but if opposite-gender couples who oppose government intrusion through marriage speak out, they are painted in a much different light: they aren’t simply disaffected couples in the same way that same-sex couples are, they’re “living in sin” or “bucking the system” because they oppose the very thing that same-sex couple want: government sanctioning of what constitutes a family unit.

Originally, there was no position on marriage within the government. The reason for this is unclear, but one thing is for certain: marriage was essentially unregulated until the middle of the 1800’s, when the Mormons began practicing polygamy. Because this was essentially a point of morality, no government position could be afforded. It was an invasion of privacy, because people didn’t like the idea that a commitment could be to more than one partner (a concept that a lot of people today might still agree with on a personal level). Coupled with the tendency for polygamy-practicing Mormons to tend to have tight controls over the people they are married to (and keeping in mind the not-too-distant past with sixteen-year-old girls being forced to marry their uncles), having laws in place to limit marriage seems like a good idea, if only to prevent harm.

But the real harm is in having controls which are in place to prevent harm which has never been demonstrated, and which does not clearly delineate to homosexual relationships. To this, I say: “prove the harm, and I might reconsider.” Stating that harm is done is not the same as being able to prove that harm is the result.

Let’s switch gears for a moment. With the Supreme Court’s ruling that sex between consenting adults behind closed doors isn’t the business of the state, the issue of marriage seems to fall neatly into the same category of the state interfering with the individual rights of people who generally want nothing more than to have a legally-protected union with all of the protections that a marriage affords. Calling marriage by a different name is basically redefining the color “pink” to “a shade of light red” and then making a separation. It’s also asking for a reduction or increase in status at a later time, as homosexuals are a minority population. The problem here is, many churches don’t want gay couples to raise a child, especially gay men. Women should be the ones raising babies, according to the traditions of most of these organizations. The problem is, so many people are simply unequipped for being a parent that children get put up for adoption all the time. Let’s now look at a real-life example of someone I consider an uncle.

In 1995, a friend of my father’s (they were friends in high school and worked together for a few years—and no, my dad’s not gay to either his or my knowledge) actually qualified for adoption of a three-year-old girl in California. Being a single man, he had a lot of proving to do, and was ultimately allowed the right to raise this child. In 2000, he married his partner, only to have that marriage nullified later. With the nullification of the marriage, he once again had to prove that the child was in no danger, and that he was perfectly qualified as a parent. There was literally no other reason for the state to do this. Yet he continued his qualification, and the girl’s residence was not changed. Imagine the damage to the little girl’s psyche because she would have been uprooted from everything she had ever known. Imagine being separated from the only parent she had known—not because of a lack of care or love, but because the state decided that his sexual proclivities weren’t appropriate to being a family, based on religious pressures.

That young girl, now 17 (she turns 18 next year), has an active high-school life which includes a boyfriend, going to social activities, and she has really good grades: she’s qualified for a scholarship at Princeton University (a member of the Ivy League) in the field of mechanical engineering—and her grades are good enough that she won’t have to complete the last year of high school to get her diploma. She’s also sexually abstinent, because she doesn’t want to ruin her chances of completing college with an unplanned pregnancy. She’s also tolerant of all kinds of things, but she likewise believes that the government shouldn’t interfere in personal relationships. All of this, because of the values her two fathers taught her.

I’d say the issue of upbringing is one which should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and isn’t something that can be covered with a blanket statement. One can’t simply claim that all homosexuals are evil, deviant perverts who have the sole aim of converting the population to their collective wills. The truth of the matter is that my “uncle” has raised a beautiful and intelligent young lady, one who believes in the potential of humanity, and one who understands personal responsibility. She plans to be active in voting, because she’s seen how voter turnout can change the outcome of an election. Nothing could be more plain to someone who sees the pain that living an alternative lifestyle has wrought on her parents—one that they believe that they don’t have much choice in. They believe it to be a matter of biology, whereas most religious organizations seem to view it more as a matter of choice.

Family is therefore a nonissue, where upbringing is concerned. Perfectly healthy individuals can result from same-sex couples—and really, most of the same-sex relationships that do wind up long-term that I have personally witnessed seem to be far more healthy than their heterosexual counterparts. This isn’t to say that one is healthier than the other; rather, that one person’s experience (mine) is that the impact on the overall health of society where same-gender couples are concerned seems to be positive. I’m sure that empirical study could bear this out.

Tolerance, and not repression or oppression, are the key to making this into a “win”. By creating laws which make a sector of the population unable to take advantage of the privileges that others have, we inadvertently create a minority which can qualify for privileges based on that minority status. Affording the protections and equal status of a marriage to these people creates stability in our society, and reduces disaffectation—the key ingredient in most revolts. And keeping the government’s nose out of our private lives is always good when there’s nothing harmful occurring. Homosexuality isn’t harmful: it’s merely a genetic aberration: a mutation which causes people to be attracted to those who are physically alike to themselves. And if we allow it, we ultimately create the conditions for it to dwindle in the long-run, since forcing people into situations where they have children furthers the genetics (the Darwin factor). People who are against homosexuality might consider that aspect.

“Living in sin” isn’t as much of a fear as it was in times past. With the demand for police to take care of the violent side of society, the threat of eternal damnation just doesn’t hold much in the way of fear to those who believe that God creates everything in nature (and “the devil made me do it” isn’t a valid claim any more). And for those who don’t believe in God, it means not having to worry about some religious nuts determining what you’re allowed to do or not, based on concepts which may be hundreds, if not thousands, of years out of date.

It’s a democracy, not a theocracy. Human beings control the fates of human beings in this system. And if human beings aren’t willing to exercise a little tolerance and extend the rule of law to protect all people regardless of political status, they will discover that they are someday a minority, and so ultimately their own protections may be removed (and be justified in doing so, even if that justification is unfounded).

It ultimately boils down to the right to privacy: the right of individuals to exercise their beliefs, so long as that exercise doesn’t harm others. It’s why the Supreme Court had to invalidate “sexual position” laws and resultingly made homosexuality legal in the United States between consenting adults. It’s also why we don’t have public security cameras in our public bathrooms, or in our homes (or even pointed into our living rooms, for that matter). Privacy is so fundamental to democracy that any encroachment should be viewed as an attack on democracy as a whole. The Mormon Church stuck its neck out and influenced a political decision (counter to the laws of a religious nonprofit, and therefore against the interests of law and order—flatly illegal activity, in other words), and in doing so eroded the right to individual privacy. When a religious group in Utah can influence the outcome in a vote in California, someone has to put a stop to it. And it erodes the religious group’s own rights, as well. In stopping them, we protect their rights as well as those of other religious groups.

The issue of a Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages is really kind of necessary in order to overrule the Defense of Marriage Act, because getting Congress to repeal something like that will require not only… well, an Act of Congress, but also a load of support, and an overwhelming majority of people to accomplish enough comfort on the part of the elected officials, who won’t be re-elected if they continue to sell out the rights of individuals. They are in a tough spot, those elected blokes, because they’re not really allowed to vote their conscience, if their conscience is counter to the will of their constituents.

Politically, this hot-button issue seems to be focused only on same-sex marriage. I recommend that the issue be removed entirely, and that government encroachment on individual belief and therefore liberty be put to an end. This is at the core of the right to privacy, and therefore core to democracy.

Some Food for Thought…

2009-06-09T16:59:00.001-06:00

Someone told me that violence never solved anything. If this was actually the case, then we cannot say that war pressured Heinrich Himmler to shoot Adolf Hitler in the head and claim it was suicide. We could not declare that democracy was a valid solution to the abuses of power which were perpetrated against people in the American colonies. We cannot recognize that slavery in the United States was solved, nor dispute that we are anything but individualists as a result. We could not say that the Japanese could have been repelled from their own violent attack on our country. We could not claim that tyranny was bad—we would have no freedom to do so.

Violence is an act of freedom. It is also an act of desperation. Violence is often used as the first solution, instead of the last. Violence (and the threat of it) is necessary so long as there are people who would use it against us. Violence, however regrettable, can have a positive outcome if it is used wisely and as a last resort.

But where we have the “War on…” paradigm, there can be no positive outcome.

The word “drugs” is an idea—one with power. If we ignore this power, then the War on Drugs is essentially lost. So long as we continue to propagandize the people of that war, painting them at their worst instead of as normal people who have a problem, we can never win. The only “win” in the War on Drugs is in adherence to the rules of war: are the people who use drugs our enemy? The dealers? The manufacturers? Pharmaceutical companies, which were responsible for a number of addictions because of poor labeling? Or how about the very people who declared war? Who is the enemy? There is no enemy declared; therefore, there is nobody to fight. The War on Drugs is nothing more than a propagandist pipe dream.

The word “crime” means a lot of different things to different people. On the one hand, it means something which is against the written laws of mankind. On another, there is a higher law, one which is based in the concepts of survival and benefit to our species. Often, the two are incongruous. One can commit an act which is technically within the written law, yet which is still a crime against humankind. And who do we label as criminals? Do we assume that the “bad guys” are in every corner, arrest everyone, and have them prove that they are not guilty of any crime? Or do we assume that everyone with a criminal history (such as jaywalking) is prone to do it again, and lock everyone away for life? Without a clear ability to label who the enemy is, a war cannot be fought. Just saying “criminals” doesn’t tell us whom to look for. It doesn’t say to look in the mirror.

The word “terror” is an emotional hot-button. An old adage says that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The Bushes and Clintons refused to meet with the enemies of the United States. Again, we have nothing more than a faceless idea: “terrorist organizations.” But in our War on Terror, we have inadvertently become the terrorists—equal if not superior in all ways to the atrocities which were committed against us. Our own failure to listen to the demands of these people—these jihadist Muslims of one minor sect which continues to claim power in the Middle East in the same way that racism claims power in our own country—has caused these atrocities to be planned against us. Had we but listened, the enemy of our country says that the violence could have been avoided. The demands have never been publicized as a cogent work, so we can’t say if they are reasonable or not. If we believe them to be the ravings of a madman, then our War on Terror is still unjustified.

These are all paradigms which have been started with a noble purpose. But without the full support (forced compliance?), involvement (conscription?), and moral superiority (propaganda?) of the population, there can never be a win. These are terrible things, it’s true, but we shouldn’t ever give up our freedoms in order to be safe. If we want safety, we have it within our power to take back our streets. We must go to war, and have the government’s authority to do so. This means a violent solution if no compromise is possible. Such was the provision of Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, and even Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. These people understood the cost of war. They also understood the price of apathy.

If we are unwilling to do what is necessary, perhaps we are unwilling to solve the problems which our society faces. So long as we have someone who believes that they can control others with impunity, we will always have problems. The problem is in believing that there are no consequences, or that the consequences are unimportant. There are no “little things,” because it’s all relative to what’s important to someone. Consider these “little things” which people continue to call important:

Cancer, which is a metabolic aberration at the cellular level.
Smoke, long-term inhalation of which can contribute to cancer.
Fire, which produces smoke.
Paper and dried leaves, which can keep a fire going.
Cigarettes, which are essentially little pieces of paper wrapped around dried leaves.

Each of these is such a little thing by itself, but it all adds up to things which can have a significant impact. This is just food for thought, and I hope at least one politician reads this and can take to heart how things may need to change.

On Being a Badass

2009-06-05T14:57:00.002-06:00

This is gonna be long. Apologies to those who are short on time.

Going through YouTube recently, I came across a video of a man who was being arrested. The officers refused to notify him of any particular charge, other than suggesting that he resisted arrest (which, actually, probably wouldn’t stand up in court, being that the original arrest was not an informed arrest either). The man being arrested tried to be reasonable at first, and then he played the “crazy religious nut” card (he may even have been serious, I don’t know enough about the situation to say). And the officers then tased him, immediately after which he got up and ran away—much to the officers’ surprise.

This seemed like a blatant violation of rights, because the officers wouldn’t tell him what reason they had for arresting him. But in fact, no actual rights were violated. It still seemed wrong to me. The use of the Taser didn’t seem well-justified. Tasers are potentially lethal weapons. They would have done better to shoot the man in the leg with a sidearm—the chances of lethality are about the same, actually. But the fact that it didn’t do much to the guy seems to imply that the unwritten “no harm, no foul” law of the universe. I’m sure that religious zealots will point out that his prayer to Eloheim for protection had something to do with it. I’ve seen such reactions without prayer. The prayer was incidental at best.

But then we have the “Don’t Taze Me, Bro” guy in Florida, and numerous other incidents where the use of a Taser was accomplished and not well-justified. A Taser is not a “control device”; it is not a “restraint device”; and it is not a “medical device:”: it is a “certified non-lethal weapon” which has a history of lethal results. I’ll write a blog entry on that alone. The point of this is to show that even police can sometimes have bad judgment, and are prone to stress and illogical thinking. Without getting into too much depth, this leads police to be on a kind of power trip, and one which does more harm than good to society. Enough depth. For now, let me get to my real point: firearms and how I’m something of a badass, apparently, because of the way that I don’t like guns.

I want to preface the following by saying that I do have a great deal of respect for police. Stress levels are high, and this can sometimes cloud judgment and clear thought. Being a cop is a tough job, and while you’re in the uniform people don’t tend to respond positively to you. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not generally personal. I understand why some cops do what they do; but power trips shouldn’t go unchecked—not even if the result is good. Cops on power trips don’t necessarily need to go to court, but if police departments aren’t willing to check their own officers where this is concerned, then the only recourse is civil action. Leaving things unchecked, or presenting a “unified front” where an officer may have been wrong can only be detrimental to the rule of law. If the rule of law doesn’t apply to police, then police are the most dangerous gang in existence. Some gangs already treat them this way.

Put another way: it’s tough to be a cop, and it’s tough to follow the law because of how complex laws are. But if police are above the laws they enforce, and cannot withstand the microscope of public scrutiny, then their utility cannot be justifiable. Simply whining about how hard the job is makes you a whiner; it doesn’t justify your actions any more than whining about being abused excuses a criminal from the crimes they commit. Nobody should be above the law, least of all those who enforce it. And I mean least of all.

Officers in lots of places seem to be on a power trip, and often seek to remove any kind of empowerment on the part of those they’re interacting with. In some cases, this disempowerment makes their jobs easier, particularly where dealing with someone who is clearly being irrational themselves. But where it doesn’t work, how about trying logic and reason? A little actual critical reasoning might go a long way to preventing repeat crimes, and it might actually serve to create a little respect for the badge, instead of engendering disdain for the power trips that many of the people who wear badges embody. The embodiment of a power trip is not where the enforcement of law should be. Humility and accountability should be the rule, not the exception.

We had a police officer come to our place a while back, and I’m sure I didn’t make a great impression, but it was because I was actually pretty pissed off at the way things were handled. One officer asked if she could come in, and I refused entry on the grounds that I don’t allow firearms of any kind in the house, citing numerous incidents where local officers had not used their firearms in ways I considered justifiable. I told them that either they had to leave their sidearm with another officer, or find someone who wasn’t carrying. They asked if they needed to get a warrant. I informed them that even with a warrant, I had the right to request that no firearms enter my home unless they had a compelling reason. They didn’t. Therefore, a warrant would not be a solution to this issue.

My lawyer was so proud when I told her. Seriously.

When the officer without a firearm came in (forty-five minutes later; I stayed by the door and kept it open the entire time to ensure that they didn’t think I was trying to actually hide anything), they saw my swords, and they saw a bow-and-quiver (no arrows) mounted on the wall near the door. The quiver, I bought through a catalog as decoration (it’s a Legolas-like quiver). The bow is a traditional kind: no pulleys, just a big hunk of wood with a white leather string on it, and it belonged to my great grandfather, who claimed a Native American (of the Chippewa tribe, I think he said) had taught him how to make it (it looks to me more like a European style, but… meh, it was his story about his friend, and I’m positive he believed it). It’s non-functional: the wood was uncared-for during a garage stay of over twenty years, and though I have been trying to work linseed oil into it, the wood just isn’t up to use (having split in four places from drying out). While admiring the bow (which he hadn’t had permission to touch), this officer asked me why I didn’t like guns. I didn’t have a good answer: I just don’t like them. But I’ve been thinking about it for months, now. More on that later. I answered him: “I just don’t. They annoy me.”

The officer’s next question really bugged me, though: “So, what do you have against the Second Amendment?” I have to say, I’m hard to offend, but that assumptive leap in logic really seemed out of the blue, and uncalled for. I believe that I have the choice to say what’s right for me. I do not believe that my own comfort should be forced on others.

Thus, I’m pro-Second Amendment. I think the right to keep and bear arms is an important check and balance against the tyranny of government which continues to threaten us (and which has never really abated in the history of governments, though somewhat mitigated in our own form—not ideal, but the closest to the mark). Firearms are intended to convey the threat of violent uprising to the government, so that the government’s aim is to satisfy the public’s best interests. At least, this was what was conveyed by those who wrote and signed the US Constitution—our Founding Fathers—in many a quotation thrown around today (especially Andrew Jackson’s “tree of liberty” quote). Even so, I won’t be a party to violence for as long as I have a choice in the matter that doesn’t make me choose my own survival as the only other option.

Even with President Obama’s apparent benevolence, there are other elements I just don’t—and probably never will—fully trust. That trust is gone: unearned, unless they find a way to earn it back (and I have to say, though I fully support Obama’s stated aims during his campaign, I’m still watching to see if the government as a whole is capable of earning my trust back).

I can’t place faith in a government that claims to serve the people, and then sells out consumer protections to the highest corporate bidder. This is the very definition of fascism: the merging of corporate and government interests. This nation wasn’t intended to be a fascist republic; it’s a republic, certainly: but operated under the principles of democracy. And those principles say that what hurts public interests is bad for the government—in spite of how well it lines a politician’s pockets. And merely redefining public interests to justify one’s actions is just low. As in: below the belt. Simply changing the definition might make something technically legal, but it doesn’t fool the public: not really. They still know it’s wrong. And so should those in power. They apparently don’t get that they need outside input, and neither does the public. If the public got that, more people would be needed to answer phones for the US Congress, in both the House and the Senate.

Many within the government really want to strip weapons from the public (including President Obama), on the basis that disarming the population makes that population safer. I couldn’t disagree more. More on that disagreement below. On to what I actually explained to the officer:

When one has a firearm, one tends to justify its use after the fact of using it. If you carry a firearm as a matter of habit or duty, I believe that you will ultimately use it. I’ve lived in the worst parts of the US (in the worst parts of many major cities noted for their high violent crime rates), and I’ve seen all kinds of things I didn’t want to see, and that I would rather not have to remember. I’ve had friends who were into crime. I had these people as friends, because I don’t want them as enemies, as they tend to have a difficult time with the concept of neutrality. If I’m not with them, then I’m against them. I’m not allowed indifference. These friends just can’t afford to work like that.

My home as a safe haven meant that I didn’t let them have guns in my home, either. They didn’t always respect our arrangement. But the whole time I was required to deal with living in a criminally-oriented situation, in a bad neighborhood, or whatever the case was, I never once put my hands on any kind of weapon in defense of my home. Why? Because I stay out of others’ business affairs. I’m a friend, not a business associate. What ill they do, that’s their business. And so long as their trouble doesn’t knock on my door, I have to accept that this arrangement works. Likewise, I keep to myself and try not to bother other people. They generally don’t think I have much of value (especially when they see exposed electronics and old TV-style CRT monitors, which implies that the stuff running is too old to be of any real worth). When I explained this to the cop, he retorted with a dismissal: “So, you think you’re a badass because you can defend your home without a gun?”

I still roll my eyes at that. Say what? When did I say “defend”? What part of what I said painted me as a badass? Yeah, that’s me: the badass who doesn’t want firearms in his home because he finds them morally offensive. The badass who preaches peace and harmony and goes to great lengths to try to promote the idea of them. The badass who tells an officer to uphold the law in a way that the particular officer finds uncomfortable. Is there a badass to be had in that? I mean, I’m not Kwai-Chang Kane: I don’t really know a significant amount about Kung Fu or whatever. The truth is, he was just itching for a reason to try to arrest me, and justify that warrant anyway. I didn’t give it to him, badly as he wanted it.

So, apparently, my badass self (being a fat, almost-middle-aged man with minor but chronic health problems) walked the officer around his home, showing him the insides of drawers and a laundry hamper next to the window, so that they wouldn’t have to get a warrant and actually rip my house apart because some brainless addict used my window as a dump zone during a chase. It pissed me off (their claiming a need to intrude into my home and check through closed drawers, etc., though I was clearly not involved), but they did actually find the drugs where the addict was seen tossing them (they were on the window ledge outside the window), and to their credit, the cops have left me alone after that. I just didn’t appreciate the attitude or the invasion of my privacy, that’s all. I said so. And they left. I haven’t had them back over. Water under the bridge? No. It still pisses me off.

I mean, really: I’m such a badass. Yep, yep, yep. People cower in fear at my demands for peace, right? Suuuure.

I was trying to cooperate and maintain the principles my children have seen demonstrated in numerous situations; instead, I got treated as though I was doing something wrong and trying to hide something. My crime: living in the path that some druggie chose during a who-knows-how-long foot chase through several neighborhoods, and having convictions which do not permit firearms under my roof. Could it have ever occurred to that officer that I’m actually not into drugs, and that I don’t make a habit out of police visits because of attitudes like his? And people wonder why cops aren’t well-liked. It’s power trips like that which make me not trust their firearms in the first place. The lady cop outside had enough respect to ask questions about my beliefs, instead of simply making assumptions. The assumptions were offensive. She told me she was complaining to the other officer’s superior on my behalf, because he was intentionally baiting me—and that, apparently, was something of a violation of internal policies of conduct. It was the first I’d heard of that particular department trying to check and balance. That woman has my gratitude. I’ve never had a more positive experience with a police officer. More like her, and my own faith in law enforcement would definitely be on the mend.

I hate being put on the defensive. With cops like these, who needs a criminal element? I feel more threatened by having those kinds of officers than I do living in a high-crime neighborhood.

I do have to say, though: thinking about why I don’t like guns did bring me to kind of a philosophical point about lots of things. That was productive. Plus, they didn’t technically violate my rights, even if they violated my sensibilities. These were generally-good cops, faced with too many unknowns to be comfortable. And they handled it with about as much grace as they could muster. The one lady cop was about as graceful as it gets. I wrote a letter of thanks and commendation to her department, explaining the situation. I’m pretty sure it went nowhere, but I have to say, she impressed the hell outta me. I found out later that she’s no longer a cop, and that she took a job as a private bodyguard for some executive’s family. If she’s reading this, ever, she’ll know whom she is. If she remembers who I am, she has my thanks, and that of my family. I just wish I had the money to rate hiring someone like her, because that’s the kind of positive influence I want my kids to see.

And she was hot, too, but that’s not the point. (NOTE: I’m checking over my shoulder at this point for my lady’s eyes. She nods, commends me on being honest, and continues about her own projects.)

The one unarmed cop was the worm in the apple. There was a second cop who entered, but he didn’t speak to me more than professional requirements dictated (and I’m actually glad for that, since I was in an increasingly-irrational mood). If they’d pressed me for another hour or two, I’m sure I might have verbally snapped at them, started telling the officer I had a problem with him, and told them to either get a warrant or another officer. As it was, the visit seemed like six hours. It was, in reality, 18 minutes. When you’re pissed off and not used to it, that’s an eternity of self-control.

Enough about my being a badass and pissed off about poorly-justified power and control. On to some reasons I don’t like guns (outlined as notes for—believe it or not—brevity):

Firearms allow one to distance themselves from the destruction and possibly death that they are inflicting.
- This lessens the impact of death, and makes it easier to dole out.
- It creates the opportunity to convince yourself that what has been done is less than what it is. And this, to me, is the primary mistake that firearms are.
They’re just too damn noisy.
- Nothing says “I’m giving away my position to an enemy” like the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire.
  - If they already know where you are, that’s another thing altogether: do what is needed to survive. But survival is not the issue, here: my personal like or dislike of guns is the issue.
A firearm’s only purpose is destruction. It can only fulfill its purpose with that end.
- Destructive potential is not always dispensed in a predictable, orderly way.
- Violence is the result of a person’s destructive potential, and this can only be amplified by a firearm.
- Guns may not operate themselves, but the capacity for destruction is amplified by their inclusion in any activity or environment (yes, even underwater).
Silencers are rarely silent in real life: the “zip” of bullets on TV as they come out of a silencer is not only unrealistic in itself, they never include the sound of the weapon’s mechanisms racking as the recoil from firing the shot occurs. It’s loud, people: someone in the next room will hear you.
- Nobody shows realistic gun operation on TV or in movies (as a general rule, with one or two notable exceptions). This glorifies the use of firearms, makes them sexy and powerful. Generally, not to the right kinds of people.
- The people who tend to want to own a gun are the same as those who want to go on a power trip. Not in every case, but the rule does hold in a generalized way. A lot of it has to do with the ways that guns’ relationships to injury and death are portrayed in popular media.
- Silencers are only one example. Virtually any other kind can be demonstrated, as well.
- Censorship with regard to blood and death is harmful, in that the horrors of injury and death are woefully misrepresented as being gloriously clean. There’s nothing glorious about it: it’s horrific. It should be represented as such, rather than being sanitized and therefore glorified.
Irresponsible gun ownership causes tens of thousands of deaths per year.
- There’s not a legal requirement to go to a gun safety course when one buys a firearm. As such, legal firearms can be more dangerous to those who own them than to those they are intended to protect against.
- Responsible gun ownership is not taught on public television. One has to pay cash for it. The aim of budget-making lawmakers is therefore not in protecting the public, but in ensuring that the wealthy can be safe.
  - Imagine the kind of production which could be made if Congress dropped $50 million into a four-hour educational course which was free to the public.
Illegal firearms bought and sold on the black market are unaffected by any kind of law. This is because criminals don’t obey laws, by definition. As such, laws to control gun ownership cannot prevent ownership by someone who is truly determined to do harm. Such laws only makes it more difficult to legally obtain firearms, and make illegal channels more attractive.
- Restrictions on what kinds of weapons might be legally bought or sold limit only those who are willing to obey the law, and empower those who are willing to break the law.
  - Controls over the flow of guns to the black market are impossible to enforce, because even police fall victim to theft of their firearms. Guess where these stolen pistols and rifles wind up?
  - Theft is against the law. If criminals who steal guns are unwilling to follow that law, and the object they steal is used for ending life, what makes a legislator believe that stricter penalties are a deterrent? The answer is not more restrictions, but more intelligent solutions to the actual issues.
- Notable tragedies have occurred, and continue to occur, because there’s no way to legally control the black market. Education, and not propaganda, is the only real solution for something like this.
- The gun industry has no accountability (and don’t need it) for the use of their product; only in whether or not their product is of good quality. However, there is little oversight on the control of their distribution channels, which are vulnerable. This lack of taking responsibility makes me loathe the very existence of firearms.
- The fact that guns are created at all causes the black market issue; not whether the person owning it is legal or not. Legality has little bearing on ownership. Because guns are created, they are automatically dangerous.
I hate guns because of Chuck Norris. Okay, and every other martial artist who isn’t typically portrayed using a weapon.
- You don’t have to reload a sword or a fist.
- It’s harder to take someone’s hands away than it is any weapon. Weapons which are taken away can be used against the person who brought them in.
- Damaging a hand takes it out of commission; damaging a weapon only makes it more dangerous to those in close proximity to it.
- With the correct training, a hand is also far more lethal and far less random than a firearm, but the “safety” on that kind of a weapon is far more effective, and far more obvious when it’s disengaged.
  - My one and only Chuck Norris joke (one I’m sure even he might appreciate):
    - Chuck Norris is the safety mechanism for his fists.
I’d hazard a guess and say that less than 1% of all firearm use in the world is for the production of food. It should be closer to 99%.
- Were it closer to 99%, I would say that my ownership of a gun for that purpose would outweigh my distaste for them. As things stand now, I won’t even go deer hunting during the bow hunt for fear of being shot by some idiot with a rifle (yes, it has actually happened, though not to me).

These are not all of the reasons, but it’s a good beginning. I firmly believe that if gun ownership was actually required by law, fewer criminals would want them.

Some final notes: the only way to make firearms less of a problem is to increase access to them for law-abiding citizens. This seems backwards, but it has worked in practice in the past. Also, creating “weapon-free zones” ensures that those who abide by this rule are disarmed if someone who doesn’t abide by the rule happens to want to take power over them. Ensuring that people don’t get hurt means increasing access to things like concealed weapons permits. When criminals can’t tell who is or isn’t carrying, they are less likely to want to take a risk to their own lives. I will never carry a firearm. Ever—regardless of legality, I don’t like them. But I think more people should consider carrying one. Such considerations make for the beginnings to well-informed decisions.

Psychology, and not restrictive legality, is where the solution can be found.

Ain’t that just badass?

How Being Pissed Off Can Change the World

2009-06-04T16:33:00.003-06:00

(or: Anarchy and its inextricable relationship to democracy, capitalism, and socialism)

I’ve been writing a screenplay about space bikers. And they’re inspiring me to do some real research on anarchism, which challenges me to study my first philosophical love: democracy.

When people think of anarchism, they look to the likes of Emma Goldman and Noam Chomsky to give them some ideas and foundations. The problem is, Emma Goldman’s a great speaker but has problems with some of her conclusions (of the “great, flying leaps in logic” variety), and Noam Chomsky’s focus on socialism can’t truly be called anarchic: and this makes both of them less than ideal choices when we’re really looking at the core of anarchism, which is individual freedom and liberties.

This is how the concept of anarchism came about: Many people want less government; some want no government. But if you ask a lot of self-styled anarchists, they recognize the need for government among the majority of the population – a position which is actually counter to the core belief of anarchy (being that governments are evil because they promote violence). And when we look at so-called “hardcore” anarchists, many of them actually believe not in anarchy, but democracy.

Noam Chomsky wrote a line in 1970 that anarchists need to be a certain kind of socialist. I add to that: an anarchist must also be a certain kind of capitalist, a certain kind of fascist, a certain kind of purist—and a kind of realist, too. Anarchy is about survival of the fittest. It’s about social Darwinism. And I utterly disagree with it in many ways. But it does have some good points. Points which I won’t extol here. If you want to know the positive side, ask an anarchist.

Society needs rules. We need to know what is expected of us, in order to understand how we affect others. We need to know how we affect others, because this gives us a predictable future, where we can know whether or not we will survive, and how well. Anyone who doesn’t care about survival ought to be shot (and this is a joke, folks: please don’t go out and shoot someone for mouthing off about not caring whether they live or die!). The rules of society also need to be simple—one thing that they most certainly are not, at the moment. Perhaps this is one of the true aims of the anarchism movement; and perhaps anarchism is just a lame excuse to say “your rules don’t apply to me: nah, nah, na-nah, nah” (a position I’m sure we could test all day with results that confirm application of a good many rules to any individual).

Conformity to the rules is the norm. This doesn’t mean that it’s abnormal to break a rule once in a while. It also doesn’t mean that non-conformists can’t conform to something. If they reject everything, then they’re not non-conformists, they’re just unthinking rebels. Non-conformists can’t uniformly reject everything, or they’re conforming to a stereotype about non-conformists (don’t you love this logic?). But to lack rules altogether (or to reject them) means that there is no society, no music, no culture, and no communication—including speech. Without some rules, things like this blog wouldn’t work.

Rules shouldn’t have to be rigid boundaries all the time. In most cases, rules are merely an observation of the way that things work. They’re one way of doing things. Many people make the mistake of thinking that because something is a rule, that’s the only way it can work. In some cases, this is true; but it’s nowhere near a majority of cases in human experience. If it can work a different way, is it really harmful?

I reject the idea of socialism in general because of the fact that most people like freedom. Socialism putz all of the cards (and trust) in one basket (the basket of government). It places the ultimate responsibility on the government, and therefore it invests trust and power over these systems, on which people rely for their lives, in the government. Having had a dose of socialized medicine in both Europe and Canada, I can honestly say that not only am I against socialized medicine, but that Michael Moore is full of it.

(NOTE: Moore actually did cop—ON CAMERA—to making up the details to justify his position on socialized medicine, rather than doing a fair and balanced journalistic piece with “Sicko”. He justified this by saying: “It’s just the way research is done.” Not! Yes, folks: yellow journalism is alive and well! Moore is no more a journalist than Bush was a democratic leader. Any attribution is in name only. And that’s my opinion only: I’m entitled to it. I also have misgivings about his other works, which although convincing, are packed with half-truths, assumptions, and unfounded conjecture if people want to actually look at the REAL evidence.)

Socialism doesn’t create a better system, it creates one in which people complain that foreigners take all their best benefits (especially if a tourist gets hurt while on vacation). It creates a system which still gives people the short end of things if they don’t pay their taxes. And socialized medicine does not pay all of the bills: many people still have to supplement for things considered “elective surgery,” such as a nose job to repair a deviated septum and help that mouth-breather down the street not appear sick all the time. Plenty of us have had our fill of socialized medicine in the US: just ask those who are on the Medicaid system what they think.

Capitalism actually makes a great deal of sense, when tempered with a good ethic of sharing and interdependence. The idea of balancing resources is also highly appealing, because it implies that an unlimited amount of wealth is just waiting to be found and tapped. The ethic of helping your neighbor needs to be alive and well, for capitalism to actually work as a philosophy. Which means that one needs a certain amount of dissatisfaction in order to allow for motivation to excel in this system. It requires a small amount of greed, as opposed to the large amount which tends to be the norm today. And it requires a large amount of privatized charity. That’s the part that most people don’t get: helping their neighbor benefits them in ways which are profitable, yet not monetarily beneficial. Not all profit is financial.

Democracy is another philosophy that people who are self-styled anarchists are actually practicing in its purest form: an Athenian democracy is a democracy where everyone individually has a say, and where the direction of the majority of the group as a whole is considered the most correct. I’m a big believer in democracy. It’s not perfect (nothing is), but it’s one of the keys which makes life work the best for everyone involved. It preserves the freedom to choose. If people were just willing to put the principles of democracy into personal practice, they would quickly find the world turning into the type of place which breeds the values we all claim to hold dear. Like freedom.

All sentient beings crave freedom (as a group, though there are bound to be exceptions). But humankind (and I can say this with authority, being that I’m human) tends not to really want freedom with all of its responsibilities; rather, humans want nothing more than to be comfortable and free from the world. This is in contrast to freedom, which is to say being free in the world.

The “Big Picture” of freedom is taking utter responsibility for your own actions, and accepting the consequences in a world where the popular choice is to accept laws we don’t necessarily agree with. The concept of fighting for change is often expressed, but without action this expression is little more than complaining—and it’s annoying after a while. It is acceptance of the status quo of the culture. And if you truly disagree, you are motivated to support change, not the status quo. But if you are not motivated enough to actually enact that change, do you really want it?

Change of any kind requires dissatisfaction. If you aren’t dissatisfied, you’re not going to want to change. People don’t like being dissatisfied. They also don’t tend to like change. And where the tendency toward “a better way” means something different, it’s easy to fall into the trap of too much change. Like anything healthy, there’s a balance which must be found: a balancing point at which harmonious interchange occurs. Whether you’re anarchist, fascist, Marxist, Zionist, or any other kind of “-ist”, the only way change occurs is by getting angry enough about something that you decide to take action. Nothing happens when people fail to take action. I don’t remember who to attribute the quote to, but I think whoever it was, they said it best:

“The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.”

Action is necessary if change is what you really need. And if you think about that action just a little, you can avoid violence, but never conflict: conflict is created any time you don’t completely agree with someone (and it’s impossible to agree with everyone, since opposing ideas are what make us individuals). And conflict’s inevitability means that people who understand things like debate and critical thinking have a leg up in the world.

Change doesn’t really take brains: it only takes motivation enough to act. This is how being pissed off can change the world. Negative feelings can bring about a positive consequence.

The Intelligence Game and Democracy

2008-10-03T04:09:00.004-06:00

Having had several friends who have been or currently are members of the intelligence community, I've had a unique perspective on the entire purpose of intelligence, and how and why the "spy game" works internationally. Having OC or NOC makes no real difference to the people who aren't in intelligence: all they know is that anyone working with the CIA is likely working as a spy for someone. And spies kill people, drive luxury sports cars, wear Armani suits, and have lots of guns all over the place. At least, that's what Hollywood sells. And Hollywood's great at selling lies.

However, there are some realities to face, for those who decide to enter this highly risky field: the sports cars are rentals, only assassins really intentionally kill people, Armani knock-offs are not very expensive, and the only gun is a field-issued service pistol which stays locked at the embassy most of the time. Real spy work is un-sexy, boring, and a horrific way to spend any time. Once you retire, you still have the same issues finding a girlfriend that you did before. And if you ever tell anyone that you yourself worked for an intelligence agency without a good reason, you place them in danger.

There are four ways that a spy dies: killed by the enemy (rare, but it does happen from time to time), old age (also rare, but it happens), suicide (fairly common), and hypertension (let's face it: diet goes out the window in the international scene, and it's hard to regain once you come back home). Forget neat little assassinations in broad daylight: spies who die are captured, taken into a dark hole, and shot in the back of the head if it's not personal, and let's just leave it at "less pretty than that" if it happens to be personal.

Which is why it's hard for anyone sane to really become a sexy field agent. In the intelligence field, you have limited options for a normal life. You are permanently damaged goods upstairs once you're in. You do what you do because it's important, not because it pays great (it doesn't) or because you get lots more ladies (if you weren't getting them before, being a spy won't increase your chances... well, not a lot).

There are three kinds of motivators for spies: money, respect, and ideas. Those who are motivated by ideas are the best spies in the world: easy to train, hard to break, and dedicated to the task's cause in a way that the others just can't compete with. Those motivated by money or respect can be corrupted, and they tend to really only do as much as the money or power being offered is worth to them. Ideas, on the other hand, are priceless. They can't be bought or sold with mere possessions, such as money or respect.

As such, money and respect are completely worthless. Piece of mind is the only thing that anyone can sell to someone who is motivated by ideas. Ideas like patriotic duty, protecting the innocent, and keeping the world of safety a little more safe. Ideas like truth, loyalty, and honor. Ideas such as emotional attachments to things and people.

That last one's really pretty important. We love our families. Everyone does. I hate my sister, but that's my right. Anyone else says something negative about her, they answer to me. I'm not violent, and I'm certainly no spy, but that's the exact motivation that I'm talking about, here: love.

Hatred can also be a powerful motivator. People are controlled just as easily by their hate for something as their love for something else. As a nation, we love our country, and hate the President who has sought nothing but power and glory. We watch as the Republican Party bails on "Old Shrub" and the Democrats are poised for power. And this angers a lot of people who solidly believe that the government isn't going to help them any more. People like militia members, racist gangs, and actual terrorists (not the Middle Eastern ones who stick to Baghdad or Riyadh or Kabul... real terrorists, who are already on our soil and in our midst, whether we see them or not).

And it's the intelligence community that has our backs. They deal with the unpleasantness, because without them we'd have a constant adrenaline rush from the fear of attack. Except that's already happened. We call it the PATRIOT Act. It's the single most effective terrorism tool against the people of the United States, because it unlocks doors to get the bad guys, and opens all kinds of things that shouldn't be opened to scrutiny that only serves to damage the already-frail trust that many people have in the government. And then there are those who don't trust the government at all, to the point that they make up half-truths and outright lies in order to work people up into a froth.

Conspiracy theorists (the fakes like Michael Moore, I mean, not the real ones who actually have our backs) cause more problems than they solve. We're 7 years past 9/11 as I write this, and people still haven't been able to resolve their questions about what happened on a sunny Tuesday morning in September. They aren't willing to accept the story that twenty religious zealots stole four passenger liners and crashed them into buildings. They aren't told about the near-attempt that morning on our President's life. They don't want to take the facts into consideration, because they see only liars and thieves in our government, stealing from the very people they're sworn to protect... liars who lie for oil and thieves who steal for the entertainment industry. Big business, who wants to "manage" the population to death for the lining in their own pockets. Big business, who funds smear campaigns and manufactures situations in order to get their way, and control who does or doesn't get into Washington. Big business, who have become every bit the tyrants that Andrew Jackson's contemporaries warned us about. The Democrats tries to do something in the late 1800's about it. And now they're just as culpable.

The FISA telecommunications amendments were necessary. The retroactive immunity wasn't. The President's word isn't good enough to seal a deal if the deal is the break the law. Passing a law in Congress first allows activity to proceed. The terrorists are already here: they're in Congress.

And in the middle of it all are the entire intelligence community, just waiting to take the fall. And they will, too, if they're told to. They'll be an unpopular topic, they'll lose money in the short run, but running any country in the world today--especially a world superpower--takes having good intelligence. And that requires that everyone else in the world be our friends. And that requires that the intelligence community not be treated merely as something that can be cast aside like yesterday's apple cores and orange peels. The entire world hinges on the operation of these people, and we never hear about it. They don't do it for the respect. The money's never going to be good enough. They do it because these people are patriots. They are enraptured by an ideal.

And our government is falling far short of the mark of that ideal. Liberty and freedom are used as words for leverage, rather than as things to be held as sacred. Honor is what people have in Iraq, who torture prisoners and kill women and children because they're so pumped up all the time in anti-American sentiment that they're sick and won't be right for a long time. Truth is what you buy from slick lawyers when you're friends with the President. Our entire ideology is shot to hell, and people wonder why "American" is used as an epithet instead of a blessing.

To fix our government, we need to vote. The people have no faith. You see, it doesn't really matter whom you vote for. A write-in vote for Mickey Mouse is better by far than not voting. Of course, I'm sure the Disney Corporation will have words to say about my use of their copyrighted trademark, but the point is this: voting tells the government exactly the message you want it to. Voting gives power. And even if only 35% of the population votes, that's the percentage with power. If only 10% votes, that's the percentage with power to say which direction our government takes. So long as that's the case, America continues to lose freedoms.

The solution is to get involved. Gather your own intelligence. Snoop. Get the dirt on everyone. Vote for the person you think will do the best job. Because leaving it to someone else is what causes the political machine to force Obama to vote in favor of FISA and to choose a corporate croney as a running mate.

Make no mistake: Biden's not the worst Obama could have picked. But he's still pretty bad, and he's got to have a message sent to him. The white-haired men who go for power in Congressional office aren't motivated by ideas or ideals. That makes them corruptible. If you don't believe me, just find a member of the intelligence community who can talk in private and ask.

We treat retired spies worse than we treat child molesters. The people who protected and defended our country long enough to retire are treated with disdain, suspicion, and even rejection. We toss them away like something used up. And that's wrong.

Because without intelligence, we wouldn't be a country. Intelligence is absolutely necessary for the protection of democracy. The problem is that when the entire community as a whole can't count on the government, the government ceases to be able to reliably count on them. When the ideals are compromised, all that's left are money and power. And that compromises our entire intelligence community at once.

Congratulations, G.W., you've just destroyed the one thing in our country that we need to honestly defend against terrorists. It's not your secret nationalized police (which would normally have been Unconstitutional). It's not your airline marshalls. It's not even the administrators of the CIA. It's the human assets that have been developed, and which we casually toss aside with the ideas upon which our country was founded. The FISA amendments were unforgiveably late, and the price so high that I'm shocked anyone would pay it.

And you did it for money and power.

That's not a President the American people can support. And even your own political party knows it. The accusations of stealing elections seem solid enough. Impeachment seems to be our only way out. This doesn't negate the good you've done for our country, Mister President; it merely diminishes it to a level that makes people ask: "so what?"

I respect the office, but I make it a rule never to confuse the office with the person holding it. Others would be less rational. I merely believe that a treasonous fascist (both using the textbook definitions, rather than a mere political slur) should not hold office in this country. The man lost our respect. Let's hope he doesn't take the office with it.

Net Neutrality and Democracy

2008-01-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've been studying the concept of network neutrality since June. I do know one thing to be a relative certainty: net neutrality is inherently linked to free speech, not to mention the other things like commerce and politics. And I support net neutrality, not because it's what my political choice demands, or because someone else has somehow misinformed me, but because it simply and undeniably makes logical sense.

Common sense dictates that network neutrality is going to mean government regulation. That part is pretty much a given. And while I'm generally against regulations that are imprudent, this is a major case of consumer protection versus corporate interests. When given a choice like that, I'm forced to choose consumer protection almost every time (except in some cases, where it's clear that consumer protection would have minimal impact on consumers while inexorably damaging corporate ability to do business... and there are even exceptions to that, as well).

Regulations about network neutrality would limit corporate abilities to control traffic that didn't originate within their own networks. The Supreme Court in June of 2007 already ruled that companies may control their own network traffic, but specifically excluded traffic outside their network from being throttled or controlled. This was essentially what was already happening, but Comcast began throttling P2P traffic such as BitTorrent or Gnutella, and I actually know some of the people who first reported the story (and no, it wasn't the Associated Press reporters who blew the story wide open). And it's wrong, in spite of their aims.

This is non-neutrality, because it's preventing a type of legitimate traffic from being used. I've been trying to get the Ubuntu CD for over a month, and downloaded a few documentaries (one called "Route Irish," which was a good primer on what not to do during a protest), and because I believe in law, I don't like the idea of stealing the work of others, so I don't trade the RIAA's MP3s or Hollywood's movies (not that I would want to anyway... my tastes are much more refined than that). But I have a friend who told me he found and downloaded the entire "Transformers" movie in about two hours flat, only to find that it was mislabelled and home-produced gay porn. He and I are in the same neighborhood. If he can download his porn file which looked to be a copyrighted file from the outside, why can't I get my legal downloads to work? That's one drawback to net neutrality: trusting the gatekeepers.

So what's the big deal? Why is there so much hype about it? The answer is: corporate interest. The facts of the matter are that the corporations have generally been led to believe (quite incorrectly, I might add) that a neutral network means that so-called "smart" switches would not be permitted. However, the pro-neutrality people are in favor of "smart" switches, so long as they don't give favoritism to traffic based on financial considerations to or from the target site. If it was a radio station, it would already be considered illegal to do this, because this is the definition of payola in the radio system (which, admittedly, is a different medium).

However, the same logic should hold true: paying an ISP (as an example) to either throttle your competition or to not throttle your own connection with them, in addition to charging consumers to access the internet. This is precisely the kind of logic that many media industries employ in their rabid enforcement of copyright: when you take from both ends of the equation, you become rich. Except that we have a word for that. It's called exploitation.

Neutral networks mean that there is no censorship of the "slowing down traffic" kind on the net. Unlike print media, the internet requires neutrality in order to operate correctly. Simply slowing down traffic has the effect of discouraging the dissemination of information and can also be used by people such as your own political adversaries. Network neutrality requires that the flow of traffic be determined only by the limitations of the network, not the chosen limitation of commerce. However, companies do need to be able to "shape" traffic in order to manage a large network.

Oddly, this is not against network neutrality. A "smart" network is a happy network. Managed switches used ethically for the purposes of creating a network that flows smoothly and efficiently is within the interests of network neutrality, as well as corporate interests. It's when this shaping of networks becomes an excuse for limiting traffic to or from a site in the name of forcing profits that the shaping even becomes an issue. Net neutrality is about ethics reform, not about limiting the ability to ethically prioritize traffic in order to assist or increase network functionality. The concept is neutral, not anarchic.

The proponents of neutrality are sometimes criticized for not having a grip on the situation. I was trained at ITT Technical Institute (though I didn't graduate) and my last course of study was network administration. I can assure everyone: I have a very solid grip on the situation, the issue, and the consequences of both choices. And I choose neutrality because it simply makes better logical sense to protect against barriers to entry, and to promote a sound economic development of healthy competitive practices. Raising a required fee to every ISP in the world in order to ensure connectivity of one company's web site would only further the gap between the wealthy and poor companies of the world, rather than assisting in competitive practice.

To date, I have read some 400 documents about network neutrality, both for and against. Early on, I was against neutral networks because I understood that the argument was to be one of "smart" versus "unmanaged" networks. However, that argument is not, and has never been, the issue at all, in spite of the anti-neutrality folks' arguments to the contrary.

The issue of net neutrality is also not simply about consumer protection. It's about censorship. And censorship is contrary to our First Amendment. If we are to embrace democracy for our republic instead of allowing it to devolve into a despotic or fascist state, we must vigilantly protect the traditional rights our Founding Fathers laid out, with the intent in which these rights were specified.

The Necessity of Patents and Reform of Patent Laws

2007-12-20T01:41:00.001-07:00

Patent law is something of a gigantic question for a lot of people. These people want to understand it. Most don't. But it's that kind of an attitude that really lends power to the people who want to take advantage of it. So let's begin by defining what I mean when I actually talk about a patent, and how it differs from copyright.

First of all, a patent is the idea that an invention was created by a specific individual or group. It differs from copyright in that patents are for things with practical applications. In fact, it wasn't until 1981 that the major problems of today with patent really started (though these are far from being the only problems), because of the software industry's insistence that a computer program is more than applied mathematics (which is, if you'll excuse the pun, patently untrue).

Computer software works by taking inputs (long strings of numbers), applying math to them (operations), and then creating outputs (more long strings of numbers). The electronic pulses that create a computer program are usually represented by ones and zeroes, representing "on" and "off" states of a computer's central processor. But in the end, all that switching and decision-tree-ing amounts to mathematical decision-making.

By allowing computer software to retain a patent, the Supreme Court has ultimately played a part in all of the abuse that consumers now enjoy because of the crossover between the three protections: copyright, patent, and trademark. The entire term "intellectual property" is actually a misnomer, because while it is created in the mind (by the intellect), there is no property until it has a practical application. In fact, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) used to require a working prototype in order to receive a patent. Since that is no longer the case (since you can't really have a prototype for mathematical equations), patent is ultimately weakened. Making tougher laws to enforce patents has the inverse effect to the desired intent: it weakens all of the so-called "intellectual property" laws by linking to them.

Also, software is not a "practical" application. The word practical has in it the same roots as the word practice. By granting patents on software, we essentially grant a patent on a thought. You see, the word practical implies a practice which is action. Software is a virtual application; that is, it provides theoretical data the way that any complex mathematical function can. A computer monitor is little more than a graphing of those complex mathematical functions. However, graphing is action. Computation is action. The calculations themselves, which require a computer to operate, are non-action, and so should not be protected by patent. Copyright should be enough.

The word application in the software world is also potentially misleading: the connotation is that it is a practical application. However, the reality is that software only streamlines work and provides instructions based on mathematical formulae, rather than accomplishing any work itself. Before software was patented, mathematical equations could only be protected by copyright, and only then if they were published. The result is that there is a lot of confusion about the differences between copyright and patent. And now trademarks are starting to get blended.

In fact, the proponents of intellectual property laws often want the protections of all three of the different sets of laws on one production, rather than a good, strong protection of just one. That's because it ensures that they can control who makes the money and who doesn't. The problem is, in the process it kills the golden goose: people suddenly don't like patents or copyrighting or trademarking because it represents corporate greed and bullying. So they try to simply work without it, and refuse to have anything to do with the enforcement. In the process, they break the law simply trying to be consumers.

And also, since 1981, the practice of "shelving" patents has increased immensely. This practice is probably one of the most damaging that I can imagine. The reason behind shelving patents is simple: it buries competing technologies. For example, an idea for an engine that was entirely powered on water was devised in the 1930's, only to be rendered unusable by the powers in the government making money by keeping oil in the engines of the vehicles on our nation's roads at that time. The water engine worked, as it was demonstrated time and again. But it did not pass muster because of a patent system too weak to protect the individual who came up with it, and too strong to be countered for the right to build it at a later date.

And now anything can be patented. Life forms, business plans, and even book designs can be patented, because of the landmark decision by those in the Supreme Court which failed to take all of the future possibilities into account. The can of worms has been opened and it now seems that nothing can close it again. It creates the problem of non-viability within the patent system. Copyright is also in danger of becoming non-viable because of the way it's enforced. Trademark will follow suit.

Much of this has been speculated about (and special thanks to rms for this speculation, which I believe is spot on, though I'm still trying to gather proof for it) to have originated with the current people who want to lump copyrights, patents, and trademarks together under the heading of intellectual property in order to blend the protections offered by these three widely variant law structures so that all three apply to all creations at once. Organizations such as the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) are puppets of the entertainment media industry, who bullies companies and even governments into acting on behalf of their own interests. Their corruptive influence needs to be at an end. It's time for reforms in the laws that allow this influence in order to reduce the power of patents and restore the balance, and it's time for a stronger separation of patents, trademarks, and copyright.

Though I support Senator Obama in his bid for the Presidency, I will say that I disagree on the idea that expanding our influence overseas is a wise idea. I further believe that patent reforms accomplished will not serve to strengthen patents, but to weaken them by making patenting an undesirable option. We are already witnessing this trend in the draconian world of copyrights.

Balance, in this and all cases of copyright and patent, is key to the survival and continued viability of the systems affected. The imbalance is in the manner in which these things are required by the laws in place today to be enforced. Many copyright and patent enforcers make the claim that their right is fundamental, and that stronger protection means increases in the law for the duration, protections, and requirements to enforce.

Another imbalance exists where there is a barrier to entry, and this is less of a major problem than shelving is, but it's still an enormous issue and one that essentially creates "haves" and "have nots" where patents are concerned. While there are plenty of US patents available at Google Patent Search, there are not patents yet available from other countries, and so enforcing international patents can become an issue, particularly where the WIPO agreements our government claims to adhere to. I say "claims to adhere to" because the language of these agreements is highly subjective in English, and seems to lack an understanding of how patents actually need to work.

Barriers to entry create a chasm between rich and poor. In a capitalist wealth distribution system, there are rich and poor, but there are also a great number of people between. This "middle class" is the foundation for the entire economic structure of capitalism, and while it feels great to be rich, not everyone can be. If there were no barriers to wealth, then everyone would have the same amount of everything, and there would be little incentive to improve: this is a communist economy with perfect wealth distribution. Likewise, if the barriers to wealth were at every turn, there would only be "rich" and "poor" and this would become an imperialist economy instead of a capitalist one.

Capitalism needs a balance between rich and poor. It needs there to be the ability for poor people to make it big, and the risk of the rich to lose everything. It needs the middle class in order to show that progress can be made between rags and riches. But with patents, there is no equivalent. There's the "rich" patent-owners, and the "poor" non-owners, with very little way to bridge the gap, because many kinds of patents required (until 1981 or soon after) a working prototype. And now the gap is one of researching patents and paying an attorney to do all of the legal legwork of filling out the papers. It shouldn't need an attorney; however, with the sheer amount of litigation and exploitative practices happening, not having a lawyer is a liability.

Today, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) requires very little in the way of proof that something works before a patent is issued. If the idea looks "viable enough" and is based on "provable principles" then a patent can be granted if it doesn't step on any other patents. And investors can fill the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" where patents are concerned. But they still won't patent things like sex toys or perpetual-motion machines.

But therein lies the problem: some of the patents that the world actually needs most do not themselves make any money whatsoever. And many that could make money and promote the progress of mankind are sitting on a shelf somewhere, unusable until the patent expires and is not renewed. But a lot of these ideas could enhance other money-making ideas, or in other ways benefit humanity.

Then there are medical patents. In order to build a life-saving apparatus in the spur of the moment, many times you must violate a patent by combining pieces. While this is not the best approach to medicine, it is occasionally necessary to innovate well outside the norms of practice.

Patents are an enormous problem. And like copyrights, balanced approach to patents are essential to the continuation of a free and open society. So what can we really do about all of this? It's a complex answer with several simple solutions.

One solution is to abolish patents altogether and amend the US Constitution. However, this essentially sidesteps the issue, which will remain in spite of the amendment to the contrary. Trying to enforce this will essentially lead us down a very dark path away from the ideals of democracy, so this is not really an acceptable solution.

Another solution is to let them have their way until the population is so sick of patents that they shy completely away from anything to do with patents whatsoever. Again, this solution leads us away from democracy, and is despotic in nature.

A third solution might be to simply ignore patents until the burden of litigation so completely overwhelms the courts that lawmakers are more or less forced to reduce patents. Again, this isn't a great solution, because lawmakers don't respond well to being forced into anything (nor do any of us, really). Lawmakers are human, too.

A fourth solution is to try to accomplish something similar to what has occurred with the Creative Commons and GPL licenses for patents, but again this isn't really as viable for patents as it is for copyright. There are certain ideas that these could work for, and certain things they would not work for.

As a fifth solution, we might also completely scrap the patent system in favor of a new one. Right. Like Congress would ever even give this thought serious consideration.

The sixth solution, and the one I personally favor, is to simply reform patent law back to its original state, sweeping all so-called "progress" in patent law away. Sweeping changes like this, I'll have to admit, aren't a fun thought for me. Rapid changes can destabilize things. However, sweeping changes like this could be accomplished with a minimum impact on stability in as little as 7 years. That's less than two presidential terms.

As you can see, there are quite a number of sides to this debate, and it's likely to continue for a very long time before anything gets done. While not as core to civil liberties as copyright, patent is still a very major issue and a balanced system is still tied to civil liberties.

Democracy and the Democrat

2007-12-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Let me make it clear, if it's not already: I am now a supporter for Barack Obama. More than that, I believe Obama when he says that he can accomplish change. There is not one candidate with a more clear track record in politics than Obama. Not Ron Paul, certainly not Clinton, and not even Edwards. We won't talk about Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani (under whose reign I was unfortunate enough to live while in New York City). The other candidates are almost not worth mentioning because I find their positions weak and their logic faulty.

Which brings me to Clinton. She is a "known quantity" which means that we all have seen her before. However, the problem with this is that she acts more like one of the "good old boys" than most of the boys do. While it would be nice to have a strong female president, Hillary Clinton is not it. And in spite of his past philandering, Bill obviously loves his wife very much, but even that isn't enough. The track record of secrets that follows that pair is a mile long. Secretive administrations are what we're trying to avoid for the future. Sorry, Hillary.

Edwards is one hell of a nice guy. However, the problem I have is that he has the appearance of a "yes man" to me.

I have two words for Mitt Romney: Olympic Scandal. We don't need that kind of baggage in the White House.

Ron Paul had my vote for a while, until I realized that he really doesn't understand what it is that he's doing. He's voted in favor of many things that he now claims to oppose. This is evidence of a lack of solid principles. Additionally, most of his supporters don't seem to be registered voters. I'm fairly sure that he's not going to be winning the primary elections... but you know, I do hear that Ralph Nader isn't running on the joint Green-Libertarian ticket this year. Maybe this is the year that a strong Libertarian might actually make it into the White House. But I don't think so. Ron Paul's method of eliminating the issues is to simply whisk them under the carpet of "deregulation" and to claim that he's a strong adherent to the Constitution. While I can agree that broad deregulation is needed in some areas, Rob Paul just goes too far for me to be able to take him seriously.

Rudy "Adolf" Giuliani did more things that made me think he was a fascist than any other politician I've had exposure to in history. In NYC, his streets were less dangerous because a police state is a safe state... so long as there aren't people in open revolt. Giuliani knew the fine balance that needed to be maintained, but that's not the government I want, nor the one our nation needs.

I don't party vote. I have declared myself "unaffiliated" both times this decade that I've voted. And I haven't voted for a presidential candidate since 1992. I was so disappointed with my choice in 1992 that I vowed I'd never vote for anyone until there was someone worth voting for. I said it would only take one person to bring me out and vote again.

And from what I can see, Obama's the one.

The more I study about Obama, the more impressed I am. This is not only rare in my personal life (studying people has shown me that most people are, at their core, hard-working and decent, but selfishly-motivated), it is unheard-of in politics. I'm not old enough to remember John F. Kennedy, and I barely remember Jimmy Carter. But what I do remember is that the people who supported them believed, but that belief diminished during office. Either that, or the person was assassinated.

I'm nearly positive that Obama is the kind of person we need in office, the kind of person whom everyone, once they learn about him, can support.

Barack Obama, we need you more than we need any other candidate. For them, it's business as usual. For me, it's personal. For Barack, "business as usual" means returning to the core values upon which this country stands. Our political stances are so similar that I can count the number of points we disagree about on my fingers. None of these points is so major that I can't support him.

And aside from this, the promise of negotiation at the table with those who would do nothing more than bicker and label me before, in order to arrive at a peaceful compromise, is too good to pass up. Even the chance at sitting across the table from them is something I've longed for since I very first became aware of the corrupting influence that they have. That is to say, the better part of a decade.

Barack Obama, I give you my solemn word: if you stick to your principles, and you are honest in your dealings, I will, in spite of your claim to not want a second term if you fail to meet certain goals, support you in another bid as president 4 years from now. The fact that you have tried means more to me than anything I could name, short of democracy itself.

The Core of Civil Liberties: Copyright

2007-12-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

Enter our contest!

When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they recognized that the guarantee of the protecting the thoughts and ideas of citizens was important. While they ultimately felt that this protection was best addressed by the First Amendment, they did mandate that Congress should have the power to protect these ideas.

However, after years of argument and study, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were still at odds as to the duration of time. Thomas Jefferson, who had read every book ever published up to his time, implied that he was not in favor of either copyright or patents, though he conceded to Franklin that both were a good way of spurring action. The ultimate story shows that Franklin also concedes that a limited time is the only way that freedom could be preserved. Jefferson understood that the current battle over copyright is one that should have been avoided, because it ultimately detracts from the freedom of expression, speech, and creativity. The battle itself is a problem, but so is the extremism on both sides of the copyright argument.

On one side, are the pirates (see my previous post about the Pirate Party's Constitution). On the other, copyright enforcers who want to make copyright all-encompassing. The enforcers are too late. It's already all-encompassing.

But the real issue at stake is that copyright itself ties inherently into free speech, privacy, and even the way our Congress works. The biggest problem is that the lobbies have historically purchased the right to lobby officials. This corrupting influence leads politicians into a kind of forced march, and one that they often feel there is no real political way out of. The officials aren't corrupt, but the chink in their armor is that they are more worried about how people will perceive something than they are about doing what is right within the principles of democracy. These principles are immutable, and they are the purpose for the founding of our country. Though it would be a radical change to simply revert copyright law to its original state, it is the aim of many to take it even further and eradicate Copyright altogether with a Constitutional Amendment.

Nothing could be so huge of a mistake than to simply do away with these protections. Used responsibly, these protections are the main driving force behind our economy, our businesses, and our dominance of the world's inventive markets. Throughout the 1800's and well into the first half of the 1900's, there was an enormous gap between the United States and other countries. We helped them forge democracies of their own, but in large part the issue of control surfaced and has negated many portions of the democracies that we now claim to be in operation.

The issue of our copyrights in foreign lands is a large one for Congress, as well. The traditional standpoint of US foreign policy is to try to maintain good relations with everyone. But once again, there is a corrupting influence that has crept in over the decades and which has created the issue of trying to control foreign countries. This has stemmed from not only other countries trying to subvert our own, but also a reactionary tendency to jump into action any time there is a perceived threat, often before we even really understand the nature of that threat. As a prime example of this, the USA-PATRIOT Act essentially grants broad "emergency powers" to the President, powers which have become a bone of contention with many people.

However, most of the public doesn't really seem that interested about it, because it's intended for prosecuting terrorists, right? The problem with this is that it's never been used for that purpose. Its only purpose, according to a source in Congress (who is neither a Congressman nor a Senator) is to prosecute American citizens. In fact, it has been used increasingly to circumvent habeas corpus for not only prisoners of war, but also prisoners in the United States who are civilians.

And again, most don't care about this. Who cares about some drug-dealer? Who wants to even worry about fair treatment of some rapist or murderer? The issue at stake here is that if they can do it to one, they can justify it for all. We require sex offenders to register. How long will it be before we require everyone to report to the government where they're living and call it a crime not to inform them? How long will it be before election fraud is the excuse to put American citizens in jail for failure to report a change of address?

You see, people in power tend to love that power. The kind of power that comes from overseeing a large population is kind of like a drug. And that kind of power is exactly the kind of power that those who want to use the mandate of what is now copyright law in the Constitution in order to control Congress. Congresspeople become pawns because they have to retain favor. And with the media controlling government (and not the other way around, by any stretch of the imagination), they very much believe that the power to influence minds resides with the entertainment industry. After all, the entertainment industry even says so.

But there are an increasing number of people who are parting with the entertainment industry and who are instead stiking out on their own. They are legally distributing their work over the Internet for free, marketing their talents, and hoping that enough people decide to pay in order to send them on tour (where even more people will pay, so that they themselves can continue making music). They are protecting their own rights by parting with the powerful and wealthy entertainment industry.

The entertainment industry folks claim that they are also seeking to protect artists' rights. The biggest problem with this that I have is that this just isn't so. The massive bulk of the artists that I've spoken to who have anything to do with the entertainment industry have said flatly that there isn't a single shred of truth to that idea. What they're really interested in is control.

The current WGA strike is evidence of this within the MPAA organizations, such as television and movies, and even radio production. The RIAA organizations haven't suffered as much, but they are instead waging their own war, and they finally realize that they're on the unpopular side. But they're still unconvinced that it's the wrong side, because the only "right" thing to them is continuing their livelihoods by screwing artists out of the right to perform their own works, fleecing Congress, and litigating against an otherwise-law-abiding public. They want to control what people see, hear, and (by proxy) think. This is a danger to democracy.

The issue of copyright comes down to the very core of democracy: the right to freely think. Protecting this right is important, but even more important is the balancing act needed to ensure that it remains viable. We should get back to the arguments of Jefferson and Franklin, and we will see the wisdom of a fourteen-year term as opposed to the life-plus-seventy-years that artists currently have. Protecting something as vital to national interests as democracy means doing things that may be unpopular, but it also means adhering to the principles upon which democracy was founded. There can be no mistake about the importance of this argument, as it is the basis for all of the other rights which our citizens enjoy.

A world dominated by copyright law until we are no longer allowed to enjoy it is not a world I want to live in. It's a broad world we live in, and one which should enjoy that breadth in full. While I agree that attribution should remain intact perpetually, I don't think that creative derivative works should be considered infringement. I also don't think that Sonny Bono's music from 1974 is great enough to warrant litigation against some teenager who decides to download it and check it out (and probably won't really want it anyway). And who remembers Martika (one of my favorite artists... most don't until I talk about her hit called "Toy Soldiers")? I don't think her music from 1988 really warrants litigation if I'm singing it at the top of my lungs as I walk down the street (off-key, I might add, since I have a vocal injury from high school that prevents some kinds of vocal control). However, litigating against me does serve to tell me who thinks that they're firmly in control.

Thankfully, "Happy Birthday" (a derivative creative work) is copyrighted, but enforced responsibly. There isn't a legal team from ASCAP or RIAA at every birthday party demanding that people pay. No team of lawyers is aiming a boom microphone into back-yard barbecues, because there isn't a single person who would stand for the infringement of privacy that this would entail. But we tolerate people aiming software into our computers to spy on its contents. We wouldn't tolerate it if a lawyer handed out lyric sheets for the "Happy Birthday" song from an ice cream truck and then tried to sue people for taking them, yet we tolerate organizations who would set up a server to download from, and then sue people for downloading. We wouldn't tolerate lawyers going through our mail in order to learn who lives at a residence, but we tolerate an end-run around due process with ex parte discovery orders (and which essentially accomplishes the same task).

The "copyright regime" doesn't really operate in a capacity that I would call either fair or ethical, nor do they seem to want to practice equitably. They do seem to want to make copyright the be-all and end-all of cultural free expression. And they're killing culture with it. Copyright litigation is killing free expression. It's doing irreparable harm to democracy in our country. And it's stinking up our global neighborhood.

It's time we firmly stanced ourselves against both the "copyright regime" folks and those who want to abolish copyright. We need to get back to rationality, and to allow the fair use of copyrighted materials again. We must do this, or the entire basis for civil liberties in this country is in jeopardy. Copyright is so important to democracy that we should be willing to act.

This is why I've decided to join the Pirate Party. By being rational and truthful, we have more to gain than by deceptive practices (as the MPAA and RIAA have done). By and large, the Pirate Party has become the voice of reason, and one that it seems as though one presidential candidate has at least partly picked up on. However, this particular candidate doesn't seem to realize that expanding upon copyright is a mistake, and will cost us not only here at home, but also abroad.

I'm fairly certain that this particular candidate stands a good chance at being president, whether he addresses the copyright issue or not. However, I cannot in good conscience vote for anyone I don't believe in. That write-in vote for "Abstain" is looking kind of good right about now.

I just hope things change before they become too late.

Pirate Party USA Constitution

2007-11-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

Constitution

of the

Pirate Party

of the

United States of America

Preamble

We are the Pirate Party in the United States. We are the people. We are originators. We are innovators. We are consumers. Best of all, we are voters.

We have been labeled pirates because our opposition claims that anyone who uses anything created by another person, without payment to that person or their designated representatives, is in violation of copyright, and therefore , according to their ridiculous standard, we are pirates because we speak and use language which was not created by us. We refute their principles of operation as having no basis in logic or reason, excepting to secure their finances at the expense of the guaranteed popular rights. Such principles erode any attempts at creating a positively-oriented culture in which the free flow of ideas can be expressed and expanded upon. Because we disagree with these principles on their face, and because we consider the reasoning behind them flawed, we can thus be considered nothing other than pirates.

We are pirates because we act in a way that effectively counters the assumed right of security in exchange for the guaranteed rights of our civil populace. We are pirates because we care about the values of freedom and innovation, which must be protected for posterity. We are pirates because we dare to claim that the interests of innovation are not well served by the current model of commercial enterprise. We accept their label as a badge of honor, and in defense of freedoms everywhere.

We are pirates, and this is our political party. We are champions of liberty: here we assemble under one banner, to defend our civil liberties which are gravely threatened. Our banner is black, but our aims are red, white, and blue. We are considered illegitimate thieves by those who openly take that which is not rightfully theirs. Action is necessary, and we are prepared to now act. A more perfect time to act will not pass again.

We hereby establish the Pirate Party of the United States of America for these and other high aims.

Title 1: General Principles & Resolve

Article 1: Democratic Supremacy

We believe in the principles of democracy: we uphold the right to democratic processes at all levels. We reject the notion that people are incapable of governing themselves; if this was true, democracy would not be possible. Democracy shall prevail for so long as the minds of people remain free. It is therefore the duty of government to ensure democratic ideals.

We shall operate in all ways and in all activities with democratic principles in mind.

We are resolved to utilize a veto consensus method in all administrative dealings, as well as with all issues brought to the membership to resolve, within reason and practicality.

Article 2: Innovation, Progress and Freedom

We support the right to innovate, as protected by the United States Constitution in the First Amendment. We respect and support the Constitutionally enumerated demand for Congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" in Article I Section 8 Clause 8. We also hold that our Founding Fathers knew how to best motivate people, and we work toward maintaining this standard once we achieve it again. We shall forge new ideas for new kinds of business. Government has a responsibility to foster both competition and open markets while protecting individual rights, but not as less important than those of any ~~monopolistic~~ organizations.

We are resolved to do all within our power to preserve the right of innovation, promote progress, and thereby ensure freedom to our population.

Article 3: Governmental Transparency and Privacy

We respect individual privacy at the same time demanding all matters of state be open to the people. A government which treats its people like criminals will breed criminals; a government which promotes respect of individuals will breed respect. People will do what is expected, provided you understand what expectations have been set. Thus, government must trust the governed if it is to succeed in the new society.

All people deserve the right to privacy in their personal affairs. All people deserve dignity. We are guaranteed to be free from interference in our personal effects, papers, and private lives by the Fourth Amendment to our nation's Constitution. That Fourth Amendment does not specify that such protection is limited only to government. We therefore uphold that privacy in one's communication, one's home, and one's private life where there should be an expectation of privacy is inalienable. We decry any attempts to monitor communications by announcing that privacy is suspended, because an expectation of privacy must be preserved in all communications for democracy to exist. It is thus counter to our nation's Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to permit warrant-less wiretapping, since the implied right to security does not exceed the expressed right to be private from governmental interference.

All people deserve to be well-informed and involved within their respective governments. The ideal of democracy must be upheld by the people if it is to survive; and this cannot happen if the government is closed to the public or interferes with the private lives of its citizens. Such interference can also be achieved by failure to safeguard the right to privacy. Privacy is necessary to our society's smooth function. Transparency is the only means by which government can ensure the popular support and involvement in governmental processes. And in the emergent global society, this involvement is critical to the maintenance of our own sovereignty and the timely action of our government.

We are resolved to promote transparent operation within government wherever possible, and to demand privacy for individual citizens in all things. We further resolve to fight warrant-less wiretapping on the grounds that such is indeed Unconstitutional and directly counter to the aims of our Founding Fathers.

Article 4: Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks

Copyright law has enjoyed the concept of Fair Use for decades. We uphold fair use as a defense for civil litigation against copyright infringement, as we believe that the large corporations, though operating legally, violate the spirit of the law when they sue unwitting individuals who simply want to enjoy media in the privacy of their own homes. Invasion of privacy demands a response. Even if a government is not the one responsible, it's still wrong. We view the practice of violating citizens' privacy as exploitative, even if it is to protect copyright.

Fair use is not infringing use. We will continue to promote legal fair use in all ways possible, including public education, and we seek to expand fair use, instead of limiting it as the current tendency appears to be. Copyrights are good. Using them to exploit people is not acceptable. We will fight every battle it takes to prevent the exploitation of our nation's citizens.

We support artist rights: artist should be not only correctly attributed, but also compensated. Artists are not compensated for their contractually-forced compliance to large company interests once they sell their copyrights, and we believe that the attribution (and resulting royalties) should go more to the artists than to those who are producing things that the population is no longer interested in. In addition, Copyright is being subverted to erode civil liberties, and as such we find an obligation to eradicate the portions that permit such erosions.

Patents, which are commonly abused and used to prevent progress and innovation, should be far more limited than they are now. Much of the value of patents come from there public disclosure of information enabling others to reproduce the invention. We believe that if no patents existed, it would be to the detriment of progress and innovation; however, we also do not recognize an unchallengeable claim that a patent should be retained if no progress is made in its development.

Trademarks are commonly abused. A trademark should not also have a copyright. In addition, a trademark's use should be allowable in satire, parody, and humor; for so long as no association to the trademark holder is implied, and correct attribution is given, there should be no issue with its use, even by competitors. A trademark should be used for branding, and for identification of a company. While these uses should be protected, they are not; and other uses are protected which should not be.

We resolve to reform laws to promote innovation, progress, and thereby ensure freedom. It is only a productive society which can ensure its freedom.

Article 5: Due Process, Self-Incrimination, and Freedom of Association

Due Process of Law is required in a free and democratic society and guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. For this reason, we resolve to uphold due process of law, even when contrary to our own stated interests. This does not imply that we agree with all laws, but the process of law must be upheld throughout until either we are victorious or no further changes are possible.

Our country's Constitutional Fifth Amendment gives freedom from self-incrimination. While the interests of justice and freedom require truth, no individual should ever be compelled to testify against themselves, nor by failing to testify against themselves implied to have admitted guilt by omission. We are against the practice of compelling people to incriminate themselves, and we view it as an abuse of the system. Many times, what someone is hiding is not their own guilt, but rather their associations to others. Such associations, where productive, should never imply complicity or agreement to an individual's motives.

We also have the freedom to associate and gather for any reason we feel is appropriate, as long as we're not advocating or engaging in violence , as guaranteed by the First Amendment. We believe in democratic processes, and gathering to show support for or opposing any policy is an informal request for a redress of grievances. These are protected rights and were made so by the Founding Fathers of our nation.

Our freedom of association is important and fundamental; and thus, by remaining silent, we should not feel compelled to either commit perjury or incriminate ourselves. If we are penalized for remaining silent, such penalties ~~should not~~ imply that we have admitted guilt. Implication of guilt being different from an assurance of guilt, such evidence should never be submitted to any court where it shows that a person was compelled to admit guilt when it was not indeed admitted.

We resolve to advocate due process of law; to discover, ensure, and remove all end-runs around true justice; and to uphold that a person's association with a group does not imply inclusion in, acceptance of, or support for their ideals and goals.

Article 6: Minorities, Prejudice, & Foreign Sovereignty

Minorities are not recognized. We are all human. Prejudice simply makes no sense, where matters of predetermination are concerned. We recognize that there are differences in skin color, bone structure, belief, thought, attitude, and values. These differences are desirable and important to a free society. Therefore, such differences should be embraced rather than used as a means of separation or limitation. We have no room for prejudgment.

As such, the only limitations for any office within our party is the ability to do the job, and to be either a voting citizen of our nation, or to be of legal resident-alien status and to be working on attaining citizenship status.

We also recognize that those who hail from foreign nations deserve the benefit of education regarding our system of government and how it works, as well as addressing any perceived shortcomings therein. However, if they do not want such education, we should not force their acceptance of it. Even if a government requests assistance, it should be the voice of the people which is heard, rather than the voice of the governing body. This is the upholding of democratic principle and operation by consensus.

Foreign nations likewise should not be forced to enforce our laws; nor should we theirs. All ~~foreign~~ nations deserve to conduct their own internal affairs as sovereign. While we can criticize and admonish, democratic principles demand that we allow other governments to operate in the manner they see fit, even if we do not agree with their methods, ideology, or definitions. They have the right to kill and enslave their citizens; they do not have the right to do the same to ours. Likewise, we should not force democratic ideals upon them. We should uphold the right of sovereignty even in our own lands. The principles of democracy should convey to the people the necessity of action, and leave the choice of action to the people.

This guarantee of foreign sovereignty does not imply that we should support tyrants. Our nation cannot and should not support or continue to permit tyranny in any form. When a nation that we trade with kills or enslaves its citizens, our nation has a right to speak against such things. We also have a right to cease trade. We must be willing to accept the risks associated with maintaining high ideals and yet not forcing those ideals on others. Even with the cessation of trade, however, we must support democratic processes and continue to encourage democratic ideals, even while we cease trade with those who would enslave or oppress their populations. We must be willing to inconvenience ourselves to uphold our principles, or they are not principles at all, and merely words which convey a nice idea.

We must also maintain our own sovereignty. Foreign nations have no right to impede or intrude upon our sovereign status; likewise, we have no rights where foreign nations are concerned. To try to control foreign countries is to invite the ire of others. Our nation does not need or deserve the ire of others. We should therefore support sovereignty of all countries while encouraging democratic ideals, without direct interference in the operation of sovereign nations or their systems of government. If our system is superior, people will naturally see that it is so and adopt it; if otherwise, a better system will surely come into place.

We resolve to help our country understand that foreign powers should remain sovereign in all things, even where we disagree. Exceptions to this include the necessity of violent resolution, should our nation be attacked, for so long as just action can be maintained.

Article 7: File Sharing, Distribution, Consumer Rights, and Originator Rights

There is no crime in sharing files, nor should there be. The crime comes when those who created the content of these files are unpaid. We do not aim to legitimize theft; we aim to help create a business model that incorporates free distribution.

Those who share music should pay the artists directly. No middle-man is necessary, as no fee is needed for distribution. We therefore do not recognize the legitimacy of groups like the RIAA, IFPI, and similar organizations whose purpose, in their current incarnation, is to protect corporate interests above those of the artists and the consumers. We reject all claims made of benefit to the artist and the upholding of artists' rights until such time that either their practices significantly alter to permit such benefit, or such benefit becomes plain for all to see. So long as industry organizations of any kind continue to exploit either consumers or the originators of the products such organizations (or their members) produce, our purpose in the defense of democratic principles is compounded.

Those who share movies should pay the producer(s) of the film, not the distributors. Again, distribution should be free. There is already sufficient capital exchange that occurs in the production and theater showing of any film; there is no need to burden consumers by requiring their further purchase of media where no purchase should be needed.

Those who share software should pay only if that software is useful to them, and then only what that software is worth to them. Programmers should be the ones paid; not distribution companies who are no longer necessary. Specifically, game designers should have the same status as rock stars in our society, because what they do excites us just as much. Large distribution companies should not be necessary in a system built around our modern infrastructure, particularly when such infrastructure virtually eliminates the need for physical media. The challenge, then, becomes one of convincing users that a particular game is worth paying for. Profits increase and price decreases at the same time. It benefits the programmers when a game is sold; but if people are unwilling to buy, then the game's value to the population decreases. Simple economics are no longer possible when a company seeks to hide its resources behind one distributor.

Market-savvy consumers are no longer loyal to branding, but to the originating studios--and thence, to the programming team itself. If a team is unsuccessful at amalgamation but they produce a perfect product, then amalgamation is not necessary. Likewise, if consumers are best served by the presence of a given form of entertainment and can obtain it for free, they should obtain it for free and only pay what they believe it is worth. The enjoyment of gaming is found in the challenge to win, not in the winning itself. Excluding people on the basis of ability to pay means excluding potential talent.

We intend to work toward the establishment and maintenance of a profitable business model in all aspects of distributed-media industry, a model which does not exploit artists or require the originators of works to sign away their rights to their innovative works. We want to help a flailing industry to realize the errors of its ways in a new and market-savvy society, because the old ways no longer work. We reject the idea that in order to profit, one must exploit others or force them to our will.

We do not accept that there is anything inherently wrong with file sharing. It is our wish to create a climate in which the free exchange of cultural ideals can occur. We do not accept that entertainment should be our top priority in life , nor do we agree that any one person, group, or industry (short of humanity itself) can own the rights to any culture, nor to the product thereof.

We have a business model to base things from. It's a matter of risking the loss of control that those of industrial thinking believe is necessary to profit. Many companies have proved that it's completely unnecessary to continue the old methods of market domination. The best company in the world is the one which is best able to adapt to the changing needs of society; not one which seeks to override these needs with an outdated business model.

We must find a means to work within the system, but so must those who oppose us. The stakes are high, and one entire industry's existence hangs in the balance. It is time they listened instead of making demands.

We resolve to educate the public about lawful uses of file-sharing, its beneficial purposes, and why it should become legal to share all manner of files.

Article 8: Unpopular Beliefs, Free Speech, and Network Neutrality

For millennia, unpopular beliefs were held to be criminal. The adherents of many ideas now widely accepted were persecuted for hundreds of years before finally finding acceptance. Endless persecutions still exist for new ideas. We are willing to allow unpopular beliefs because it is only when unpopular beliefs are permitted that we are also permitted to hold our own unpopular beliefs.

We uphold the right to be unpopular. Where there is a difference of opinion, people should be at least willing to listen. The less people are willing to listen to things they personally find distasteful, the less those who express such things will be able to learn.

Likewise, we are against others determining our desires and shaping our apparent will against our wishes. Free speech demands that computer networks likewise remain open and free from the interference of others. The right of the people to be free from governmental infringement upon our communications is guaranteed in our nation's First Amendment to the Constitution. However, commercial interference must also be protected against. While we are not opposed to the use of self-regulating "smart" networks, we are opposed to the use of such for the purposes of profitability, and we are likewise opposed with regard to human-managed networking apparatus because of the high potential for abuse. Self-regulating networks are neutral, as the rules regarding their operation are unchanged. We therefore support network neutrality, rather than any kind of "equal" network. A neutral network is required for democracy to prevail.

We resolve to uphold the right of free speech, because even if we disagree with the message, the right to speak and be heard should be upheld in all cases. This includes the right to express unpopular beliefs in a rational manner, as well as the right to be free from interference with our expression by the unscrupulous.

Article 9: Acting Within the Law & Civil Liberties

We do not promote, advocate, support, or engage in illegal activities. Where there is a disparity between individual action and the law, the law wins. However, if the law is incorrect, based on incorrect or invalid principles, or created because of political pressures rather than because it's right, we hold that these laws should be changed. Changing a law does not require civil disobedience.

We uphold the civil liberties of all peoples. Freedom to innovate is at all levels the right of the people. It benefits government when the people innovate, because governmental interests in the promotion of progress and the upholding of popular rights is based in the ability to express new ideas.

We reject the notion that civil liberties must be sacrificed in order to maintain order or to serve justice.

We resolve to further civil liberties in our own country through education and public service.

Article 10: Voting, Voting Rights, and Taxation

All citizens are entitled to participate in their government. We will promote the right to vote for all citizens, regardless of legal status. Our Declaration of Independence explains that taxation without representation under the law was abhorrent to our founding fathers. We hold this to be a timeless truth, and so if any portion should be disallowed voting rights, the same should be entitled to be free from taxation.

This includes unpopular segments of society, such as criminals, as well as more popular segments, and members of our elected government.

Our candidates are free to support or oppose the Electoral College system, as this system has not been shown to either uphold or denigrate democratic principles, the values of a free society, or anything that opposes these. However, we do recognize that this system is in need of reform. In a well-regulated democratic society with open communications, representative voting is not really necessary, as our infrastructure is capable of clearly indicating the will of the people.

Gerrymandering circumvents the reason for having free and open elections in a democracy. Though gerrymandering is common practice in our country, we are opposed to it, and would seek to establish a nonpartisan committee to review and establish boundaries for each Congressional district based on both predetermined and more current fair criteria, where voting is concerned. We would also seek to establish new criteria by Constitutional Amendment, if necessary to secure a nonpartisan method of dividing Congressional districts. If such is not necessary, we would see no need to continue working toward it.

We resolve to uphold the right of truly universal suffrage among our citizens. What the population demands, it should receive, even if against the wishes of a governing body. As such, we also resolve to ensure democratic processes at all levels of our operation.

Article 11: Freedom, Societal Advancement, and Being a Pirate

A free society recognizes that freedom comes at a price. This price is responsibility to the government. Government and the governed should be an equal, symbiotic, and interdependent relationship, whereby the government provides what the people demand, and the people provide the needs of government in return. Where one has more control over the other, there can be no stability or balance in the long term.

We understand that society is advancing into a new era of thought, and this era is marked by extended opportunities and competitive generosity. Beginning with several thousand consumers, it has become several hundred companies, and this movement is growing not only in scope, but also in magnitude.

We recognize that in order for society to advance, there must be an appreciation of values. The advent of the internet in the average person's life universally causes social change, and this is a global change that cannot be legislated against. We support this transition into a new society, with new values and new ideas. Our aim is to promote this change, and to assist those who have difficulty with it.

We also see that others label us pirates because we disagree with them (regardless of whether or not we actually engage in piracy, we are so labeled because of our opposition to their ideals). We are told that any time one uses something that doesn't belong to them, that one is engaging in infringement, and therefore piracy. Because we all use language (which doesn't belong to us), we are infringing on those who created it. Because we don't pay a royalty, we are all Pirates.

We resolve to continue using the name "Pirate" for our political party, in the name of freedom and social progress.

Title 2: Structure

Article 1: Separation of Powers

All powers within the Pirate Party of the United States shall be separated into seven sections, comprising a National Administration of the Pirate Party:

Administrative;
Operations;
Legal;
Promotional;
Records ~~-keeping~~;
Financial; and
Service.

These powers being necessary for the timely operation of the Pirate Party, each shall have one officer for each of these powers, whose principal responsibility shall be the smooth operation of the Pirate Party, and who shall have secondary duties commensurate to the power which that person shall represent while in the capacity of office.

The Administrative Officer, who may also be called the Administrator, shall oversee all matters involving the internal administration of the Pirate Party, and shall act as both chairman of the National Administration of the Pirate Party, and as spokesperson for the Pirate Party of the United States in general (though this may be delegated to a specific spokesman as provided for within this document). The Administrator shall also oversee all elections within the Pirate Party of the United States, and shall ensure that democratic processes are upheld. The Administrative Officer shall also coordinate, if not directly oversee, communications with the Pirate Party International, and the various other Pirate Party groups throughout the world. The Administrator is also the directing officer for all operations within the Pirate Party. The Administrator also shall also be the coordinating officer for the various state administrators for the Service Bureau, and shall have the power to approve the state parties individually as they qualify for state-level party status.

The Operations Officer, who may also be called the Assistant Administrator, shall oversee all matters involving the internal and external operations of the Pirate Party, and shall also conduct all business as necessary in the absence or incapacity of the Administrator, and as the Administrator shall direct. The Operations Officer shall also have the duty to undertake the duties of those offices which shall be vacant, as they shall be from time to time, and to assist in the smooth transition of office from one administration to the next. The Operations Officer shall also act in the capacity of Liaison to the Federal Government, for any officials, officers, agents, employees, or affiliates within the United States Government who may need direct contact with the party. The Operations Officer may also have direct oversight into the public affairs of the Administrator, and shall report such to the other officers if a need to report such is perceived.

The Legal Officer, who may also be called the Administrative Lawyer or Legal Advisor, shall oversee all matters involving law, including (but not limited to) the proposed and actual legislation of Congress, litigation in cases that are of interest to the Pirate Party--particularly in cases where consumer rights are in play--or which are of national interest, and approval of all activities undertaken by the party in which there is a question of legal standing or legality in action. The Legal Officer shall also be responsible for the recording of all policies within the Pirate Party, and shall forward all records to the Record-keeping Officer. The Legal Officer shall also act as legal counsel to the Pirate Party of the United States, for such time as there is a need for legal counsel. The Legal Officer may ask for fees above any normal pay for activities in the capacity of legal defense, prosecution, petitioning, or other direct activity within the justice system on behalf of the Pirate Party of the United States, is such activity is required by the needs of the other officers.

The Promotional Officer, who may also be called the Marketing Administrator or Publicity Advisor, shall oversee all matters involving the promotion of the Pirate Party of the United States, including (but not limited to) the issuance of press releases in the name of the Administrator (with approval thereof), all signage and promotional materials, and the authorization of the use of copyrighted materials. The Promotional Officer shall also act in the capacity of improving the image of the Pirate Party, and shall advise the other officers of the Pirate Party in methods to improve the Pirate Party's image with regard to the public. The Promotional Officer shall also oversee all official web sites, and shall maintain an adequate knowledge or staff to administer these, and to ensure their compliance.

The Records ~~-keeping~~ Officer, who may also be called the Recorder or Records Administrator, shall oversee all matters involving the official records of the Pirate Party of the United States, including (but not limited to) the maintenance of both paper and electronic archives. The Recorder shall also be responsible for the recording of meeting minutes and publication thereof.

The Financial Officer, who may also be called the Administrative Accountant or Accounting Administrator, shall oversee all financial transactions and bookkeeping functions within the Pirate Party, including having direct oversight with regard to all party, campaign, and other finances. The Financial Officer shall also be responsible for all budgeting and financial planning aspects of the Pirate Party's finances. All records shall be transferred in duplicate to the Record-keeping Officer.

The State Advisory Board shall be comprised of all of the Administrators (and acting, interim, temporary, and provisional administrative officers) of the state party. Officers shall in all ways be charged with the protection of the sovereignty of the individual state parties, while at the same time upholding the goals and principles that espouse democracy within our nation. The State Advisory Board shall also collectively be charged with maintaining backup archives of national-level records for the Record-Keeping Officer, who may request from time to time an inventory of the records on hand in each state office. The State Advisory Board shall also hold the power of veto over the Administrator's activities, if unanimous in their objection to such activities. Each state administrator shall thus be considered a national-level officer with all of the benefits and privileges that such office shall confer. State administrators shall be immune to national votes of no-confidence if there is a provision in their state bylaws or constitution that should allow such a vote to be held and stand within the individual state.

All officers shall be required to present a unified front to outside influences. In such cases, when a decision is made that may affect the good standing of the entire party, or if such decision should be adverse to the membership of the party, or to the established aims and goals of the party, or not consistent within the law, or by any other estimation of the one faced with such decision, the same should defer to the entire body of officers for decisions to be made, unless by failure to make such decision on the spur of the moment shall result in even greater harm to the party, its officers, or its members. Officers who make such decisions will need to notify the other officers in the most expedient manner possible. Failure to adhere to this policy may result in censure and ban from office, as well as summary removal upon discovery of such decision.

Officers are permitted to hold more than one office, if duly elected into both offices. Officers also holding provisional state administrative titles shall not be considered in violation of this standard.

Article 2: Nomination, Election and Appointment

All nominations shall be accomplished by either announcing candidacy for a position, or by having someone else announce the candidate's nomination for the position. The nominee may withdraw the nomination at any time before the actual vote. Nominations shall be announced a minimum term of 7 days before a vote should be held. Nominations may be held open for up to 30 days. All nominations must be announced in a public area, such as the wiki, forums, or chat channels, where members are likely to be able to see them. There is no requirement for members to see them: if nominees are unwilling to get people to vote for them, that's not an issue the party needs to address.

All officers shall be elected by veto consensus vote. This means that members shall be nominated by any member the electoral body of the Pirate Party for a specific position. If there shall be no dissenting voice, the nomination shall stand, and no seconding nomination shall be needed. An agreement among the peers involved in the election process shall suffice unless there be contention about who is the best candidate, at which time a vote may be called by the Administrative Officer (or Acting Administrative Officer). The vote shall be open and tallies shall be counted according to the method of voting, as appropriate to the occasion.

All votes shall be done by use of an anonymous voting mechanism, which shall be accomplished using any means at the disposal of the Administrative Officer, or by any appointed. If no anonymous mechanism exists, the closest approximation may be used if agreed to by a majority of those voting.

Officers have the right, responsibility, and duty to appoint agents and assistants as the need demands. Officers do not have a requirement to compensate these appointees, as all positions within the party are voluntary. Volunteers may be paid if funds permit, and as necessary to ensure their retention within the party, if their position should be considered vital to the Pirate Party's operation. Officers may select or change the titles of those under them as necessary or as beneficial to the position.

All officers are subject to votes of confidence or no confidence, should they act in the party's interests without the consent of the membership at large. Those officers who have thrice committed acts, or failed to act in a capacity, which inspires a vote of no confidence, the same should be dismissed from office. Such officers shall be replaced at the same meeting which their third vote of no confidence has been obtained.

Article 3: Meetings, Quorum, Participation, and Adjournment

All meetings shall be announced no less than seventy-two (72) hours in advance, and no more than ninety (90) days in advance. It is preferred that seven (7) days' notice be given. Officers and members who are unable to attend shall be required to give notice within twenty-four (24) hours before the meeting. Any meeting with less than seven (7) days of advance notice shall be considered an emergency meeting.

Quorum for official meetings shall require no fewer than two (2) officers and two (2) non-officers be present at all meetings in order to satisfy the requirement of quorum. If no officers shall be present, the meeting shall not begin. An exception to this rule may be declared by consensus agreement of those present if there be no officers.

The National Administration of Pirates shall announce and hold one (1) regular meeting each calendar year on the Fourteenth of July, which shall be the National Convention of the Pirate Party. At such meeting, the following orders of operation shall take precedence over all other pressing matters:

This Constitution of the Pirate Party of the United States of America shall be reviewed in its entirety, and amendments proposed if any portion thereof shall be considered a non-issue.
The members of the National Administration of Pirates shall review all activities during the preceding year, and shall issue a report therefor.
The members of the Pirate Party shall, as a body, elect to uphold or remove any amendment proposed, excluding temporary emergency measures, which shall end upon that day unless consensus among the attendees shall indicate popular favor.

The Pirate Party shall then attend to other orders of operation on the agenda before them.

The National Administration of Pirates may also convene during, and for up to 24 hours after, each election. This meeting is closed to the public, and is for watching and analyzing the election dynamics unfold. However, state and national delegates may enter and leave at will, and may convey information at will to the public. No planning of any kind may occur during this convention.

All members of the Pirate Party are welcome to participate at all times during any meeting. However, members may be ejected from the meeting for continuous, irrelevant, disruptive and counterproductive behavior. Members are entitled to at least two warnings. Members of the press should identify themselves as such, or risk permanent removal of all members of their news agency at the option of the Administrator. All other members of the public are welcome to attend official meetings without limitation, though only members may vote on any given topic.

Time-sensitive matters may be voted upon my the membership at large after the fact; such matters shall be votes of confidence or no confidence in the person or persons who have undertaken such activities.

All meetings must be recorded. It is the duty of the Records Administrator to provide for such recording, and for the publicity required in accordance with the law and de facto standard.

All meetings may be fully adjourned at any time, provided no existing matters need to be addressed. If new matters need to be addressed, such matters may be deferred to the following meeting. Temporary intermissions may be granted for reasons of sanity, health, and comfort during extended meetings.

Article 4: Compensation

All compensation is commensurate with the necessity of retention. Therefore, officers shall be paid an equal share of the funds budgeted for their payments. Officer pay may not exceed 10% of the total budget. Administrative costs may not exceed 15% total, including pay of all officers. Budgeting is the duty of the Financial Officer.

However, if there be no monies raised, then no pay should be allotted. The Legal Officer may request pay for legal services as outlined, whether monies have been raised or not.

Article 5: Limitations of Power

Officers may not knowingly engage in any action, activity, movement, or act that violates the law of the land, while in that land, wherever it may be, in accordance with the law.

Officers may not knowingly support any group or individual in committing any illegal act, in accordance with the law.

Officers may not act in any capacity on behalf of the Pirate Party, save that which is specified within this document.

Officers must act in a manner that is honorable, truthful, just, and forthright. Officers may take oaths of secrecy and keep them, provided that such oaths do not seek to circumvent public interests.

Officers must ensure that a democratic process is retained at all levels of operation within the party, and encourage democratic process in all levels of government.

Officers may not substitute personal prejudices for public interest.

Officers who demonstrate an inability to operate within these limitations may be removed from office with cause.

Article 6: Prohibited Powers of State Parties

Individual state Pirate Party organizations may not contravene decisions made by the Pirate Party of the United States, except where such decisions are clearly contrary to state laws.

State-level Pirate Party organizations may not speak for the Pirate Party of the United States, except where specifically permitted or authorized.

Article 7: Vacancies & Removal From Office

Vacancies will occur from time to time, as officials within the Pirate Party find that they are unable to devote time to their office, or by reason of removal from office, death, or another incapacity. In such cases, a replacement officer may be elected at the following regular meeting of the National Administration of the Pirate Party by those in attendance.

The duties of vacant offices shall be apportioned to the other officers within the Pirate Party of the United States, until such time as a new officer shall be elected.

Officers who die while in office shall be considered removed. Officers may individually resign their commission, and when such resignation becomes effective, they shall be considered removed from office. Officers who are removed from office for any other reason must be voted out of office. Officers who are voted out of office may be voted out at any meeting, emergency or otherwise, where a quorum exists. Officers who are removed from office may not nominate or appoint a replacement. All officers must be elected by the body of membership.

If all positions are vacated, the electoral body of the Pirate Party of the United States may hold an emergency meeting to elect new officers.

Title 3: Activities

Article 1: Formation of Political Action Committees

All political action committees ("PACs", or singular: "PAC") that seek to use the name of, or create benefit to, the Pirate Party, must be authorized by the National Administration of the Pirate Party. All PACs must specify their reasons for operation, and the necessity of use for the Pirate Party name must be authorized in advance. Additionally, the Pirate Party must act in accordance with the law regarding oversight and reporting of the PACs. Each PAC is also responsible for its own operation.

To become an officially recognized PAC, the group must, as a unit:

Write and submit a statement of organization, including a declaration of intent, a mission statement and a listing or account of intended goals.
Include methods of fundraising, operational guidelines, and record keeping.
Justify their purpose by illustrating the need to the officers.
Complete and submit paperwork as required to government bodies.
Pay all fees and dues for the formation of the PAC, as well as individual members who must register as lobbyists or for other reasons.
File an initial report with the Federal Election Commission (or another body, as appropriate).

PACs must also meet with the approval of the members at one meeting of the National Administration of the Pirate Party.

No monetary contribution to the party is required by the party nor any part of the membership. However, should there be any who which to contribute, the same shall be permitted.

Article 2: Formation of State Parties

Each state and territory under the jurisdiction of the United States may form a political party. They may adopt whatever name as appropriate within their state or territory. State Parties must submit the following:

A constitution for the state party, which includes the name, structure, operational guidelines, and a mission statement.
A copy of the statutes for the state in which they are attempting to start the Pirate Party as a state-level party.
The names of the temporary state-level officers, in compliance with the state laws.
The names of the members of the state-level PAC to handle the finances of the state party (if required by state rules or standards).
A copy of an empty petition in electronic format (PDF is preferred, though any agreed-upon format may be used).

All items must be reviewed and approved by the National Administration of the Pirate Party. If no decision has been reached within 30 days, the state party shall have permission to proceed.

All approved state parties shall receive:

Official access to the voter tracking system used by the national party, though restricted to their own state systems.
Official access to materials for promotional and fundraising use.
Official access to Pirate Party collaboration tools.
An invitation to the Pirate Party Administration Mailing List (which is for administrative use only).
A package of media relations tools, as available.
A press release announcing the collection of signatures, when ready.
The full support of the Pirate Party of the United States.

State Pirate Parties shall not receive the foregoing without first obtaining approval by the National Administration of the Pirate Party.

Article 3: Oversight by the Pirate Party

All PACs may be overseen by the Pirate Party once authorized. However, PACs are autonomous bodies and thus are not subject to the regular review of the National Administration of the Pirate Party. It is in the best interests of all involved to maintain such autonomy. All PACs shall maintain non-commercial and independent interests in support of the principles of democracy and freedom.

Article 4: Symbols, Slogan, and Our Mascot

We may reserve the right to add meaningful symbols as needed for promotion. Our official symbol may change by changing the description in this paragraph, though change of the basic symbol should be rare enough to warrant a two-thirds majority voting requirement for any change to occur.

Our official symbol is a blue flag on a blue pole in the shape of the letter "P" surrounded by a red circle on a white field. The center of the flag bears a single star. We hold the current Flag of the United States of America to be the physical representation of our party's interests in the absence of our official symbol.

Our current official slogan is "No Safe Harbor for the Enemies of Liberty" and may be amended or changed as needed for promotional purposes.

Our mascot is the parrot, which may be stylized as needed for the purposes of marketing. The parrot should be red, white, and blue accordingly.

State parties may adopt our national symbols and slogans, both official and unofficial, as the need arises, but also may adopt their own materials as they see fit.

Article 5: Donations

The Pirate Party of the United States may collect contributions, donations, and other monies without limitation, excepting as provided by law or statute for political parties. Spending of such monies in accordance with the law is in all ways permitted. The Pirate Party of the United States may contribute to campaign finances with a fund-matching system, provided that such matching is done after the primary elections for any office. If there should be no primary elections for an office, fund-matching may be acceptable.

Article 6: Standards of Practice in Accounting

All funding shall be maintained with regard to records, reporting, and dispersement in accordance with law or statute. All accounting practices shall maintain, as a minimum standard, the standards of practice equivalent to those found in the private sector. The Pirate Party may utilize any methodologies within the bounds of law, statute, and standards of practice herein outlined.

The Pirate Party of the United States may own, operate, and specify the uses, within the bounds of applicable law, of any number of accounts at financial institutions. Such accounts must be reconciled at least monthly, and more often is more desirable.

Article 7: Discrepancies

All discrepancies in accounting or party activity with regard to our stated aims shall be considered a gross infraction of the bylaws, and a reprimand may include termination of office for those found to have willfully engaged in such infracting behaviors. Those who report such discrepancies may be recorded, but the privacy of the individual must be maintained throughout the internal investigation. Those who have been found to have unintentionally caused such discrepancies shall receive a reprimand which may not include termination of office.

If such discrepancies violate the laws or rules of conduct within the United States, the jurisdiction of law enforcement shall reign supreme with full cooperation from all officers.

Title 4: Debts

The Pirate Party of the United States will not have debts. Any debts incurred shall be the responsibility of PACs to deal with, including debts incurred by litigation.

The Pirate Party may determine that any debt is invalid by declaration. However, it may not refuse to pay such debts without due process of law, or without an agreement to transfer such debt to the appropriate authority.

Debts which may not be transferred and which are declared valid under the law shall have top priority for fund allocations, in equal share if there is more than one debt.

Title 5: Oaths

Oaths may be sworn by any member for any reason, within or without the Pirate Party of the United States of America. Such oaths are treated as verbal contractual obligations and shall be upheld within the party as contractually binding. Oaths may not bind an individual against any civil rights. Oaths must be witnessed by at least two people, in addition to the oath-taker, and the person or people to whom the oath is given. Oaths may be recorded by the Records Officer if such oaths potentially impact the operation of the party.

Title 6: Amendments

Amendments to this Constitution shall be heard by the National Administration of the Pirate Party using a participatory consensus system. Amendments must be announced and held for study for at least two meetings, prior to being adopted. Amendments may not be given for temporary issues; instead, temporary emergency orders may be given, which may not exceed 6 months without a consensus vote. Temporary emergency orders

Amendments to this Constitution must be unanimously upheld by all members voting in a popular vote. Those who abstain should not be counted as opposing or supporting. Those who oppose may have opportunity to address specific concerns. These concerns must be either upheld and incorporated, or logical reason given for refusal to uphold. A recall vote may be held only four times before an amendment must be resubmitted.

Any vote which exceeds 95% shall be considered passed by consensus, and may be considered unanimous if all objections have been addressed already, if the dissenting votes are dissenting because of continued objection to an item which has already been addressed to its exhaustion, rather than simple opposition to the entire amendment.

Those who abstain may outnumber voters. This is expected and acceptable for a consensus system.

Title 7: Ratification

This document may be ratified by the signatures of two acting members of the National Administration of the Pirate Party, whether duly elected or not, as well as by no fewer than four others who shall swear to uphold its principles for so long as they shall claim membership. It shall then hold the power of validity within the Pirate Party's operation, and shall be a final document.

No portion of this document, should it be held invalid by law or popular dissent, shall hold to invalidate any other. No right retained or supported shall be construed to deny any other, nor shall it construe any disparagement of the law, nor support for any disparagement or inadherence therein.

Signatures

We, the below signed, acting as officers, do hereby ratify and swear, with our digital signatures, that this Constitution is a worthy and worthwhile document, and that we do uphold it as it has been executed. By our signatures, we swear that to our best knowledge and belief, the Constitution has been appropriately ratified by the signification of votes by members, potential members, and interested individuals.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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I hereby sign and affirm via digital signature that I support the
constitution of the Pirate Party of the United States as was presented
in the meeting of November 14 2007

Andrew Norton
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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I hereby sign and affirm via digital signature that I support the
constitution of the Pirate Party of the United States as was presented
in the meeting of November 14, 2007.

Ray Jenson

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The document is hereby ratified 30 November 2007 and is valid perpetually hereafter for all functions of the Pirate Party of the United States of America.

Anti-Democracy in Utah

2007-11-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly sure the ACLU doesn't get involved if there isn't a compelling reason to get involved. I'm also fairly sure that the county clerk of Weber County, Utah, is trying hard to prevent a scandal. Unfortunately, the actions of a few people have created the scandal, and so their lack of cooperation creates an even bigger one.

You see, Mayor Matthew Godfrey won the election this past election (November 2007) and there are a number of people really angry about it. The vote was close, showing just a 49-vote difference. But there were also a number of provisional votes that were discounted (516 of them, to be precise), and there were 1,735 provisional votes that weren't completely counted that day.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. The problem this time is that one of Mayor Godfrey's supporters was the one doing it. And it threw the vote, because several of the people whose information was challenged or who were otherwise ineligible to vote were vocal supporters of Godfrey's opponent, Susan van Hooser. Though she was mud-slinging with the best of them (or, at least, her supporters were), Godfrey took a significant portion of the votes, claiming to have reduced the crime rates.

Well, he did lower the crime rates on paper, but he did so by ultimately penalizing people who call the police for assistance. Property owners whose tenants call the police more regularly pay an annual tax that is 10 times that of normal. Additionally, those who rent to tenants who are known to have broken the law in the past (they use the word "recently" in the law, but in practice it's "ever" because of no definition about what "recent" really means).

I'm also not a Godfrey supporter because of the fact that he is on record as being against the practice of democracy. When asked why he didn't put a controversial idea to a popular vote, he responded with: "We [the city of Ogden, Utah] don't have that form of government.: I make a decision, and that's what we go with."

Godfrey did a great job with rejuvenating the downtown area. He tore out a dead-end half street and a few acres of public parks to install an amphitheater (which his name is all over, in spite of the fact that the actual plan for it had been in the works for almost a year before he ever entered office). He added the intermodal center (which he paid for with city funds for the benefit of public transportation), so for that I gotta give him credit. He changed a failing mall into a thriving shopping area.

But he's done little for the actual economy of the area. He hasn't brought in new jobs. He hasn't expanded the viability of the city (mostly, he's put out fires to prevent the city's viability from further deteriorating, with a result that's negative if you account for inflation and compare it to the national growth rate). He's made the city less of a desirable investment for legitimate property investors, while increasing the opportunities for those who are less legitimate. He's ultimately been bad for the city, and yet he spins it just enough to come out smelling like a proverbial rose.

Like both Kerry and Bush in 2004, Godfrey appears willing to lie, cheat, and steal his way into office. There was a time when that worked. It's not acceptable. It strikes at the very heart of democracy. It prevents the democratic process from serving the public (as it was intended to do). It causes changes that are detrimental to the process.

With all of this, I think I'd almost rather have a convicted child molester in the office of Mayor than Matthew R. Godfrey. There are actually a few reasons for this. The child molesters have to prove something. They're used to being under public scrutiny because of their Federal requirement of being on the sex offender list. They tend to be very honest, and if everyone knows their history then it's not a difficult matter to keep the mayor away from the kids (a mayor who breaks the law while in office risks losing that office, so he can't go to public parks, schools, etc.). But most of all, a convicted child molester is a known quantity. You know that you can't trust him, and so everyone double-checks the office. It establishes the need for checks and balances. It promotes the democratic process and gets people involved. And though I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable casting a vote for someone like that, if it happened then I would probably be forced by principle to support it.

Controversy is something that people try to avoid. However, controversy has its place, and shaming people into doing the right thing is exactly what the City of Ogden needs. We need to ensure that Godfrey has a watchful eye on him every step of the way. And most of all, we need to ensure that he understands that democracy is guaranteed in this country.

I just hope we don't have to go through another fiasco with rigged voting. If donations are any indicator, the democrats have a clear lead in the upcoming elections. The era of Bush politics is coming to a close (I hope and pray that this is more or less permanently during my lifetime).

Democracy, Dissent, and Free Speech

2007-11-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Enter our contest!

I've been in court this week on a matter involving my son, so until that's done, the posts here are likely to be sporadic. Apologies to those who have elected to read.

Speaking with a dissenting voice is a sure sign that democracy is alive. Let's face it: nobody likes to be told they're doing a poor job, but there isn't a better test of democracy than the public expression of discontentment. Shame is a powerful motivator to create positive change, particularly where that shame is considered by the public at large.

Shame in my own life has been a powerful motivator for change, particularly where I've been concerned about the opinions of those around me. I've done some things I'm definitely not proud of, but with my set of experiences, the end result has been positive. The problem is that there needs to be accountability for wrongdoing, and in corporate America, there is little accountability because of the power of money to bring lobbies to bear on Congress, limiting their effectiveness by creating the impression of a large amount of support or opposition. However, the issue is that lobbies often misrepresent the issues at hand, because the lobbyists only know what they are told, and often they are not told a complete set of facts.

Two items of shame that I to point out include the secrecy with which our country's current administration operates, excluding people from the operation of government because (as some insiders have stated openly) they have "operations that wouldn't stand up to sunlight". This untenable practice cannot be tolerated in a democracy.

The other item of shame is the blind adherence of the top political contender for being our next president, Barack Obama, to the draconian system of copyright that pervades our country and which threatens to undermine not only the democratic processes that make us great, but also our economy. This system of copyright is not democratic, and expanding on it is absolutely counter to the Constitutional mandate of protecting the creative works and processes that make our nation great.

And where Obama is concerned, this is about the only spot I really disagree with at a basic level. I can understand his pro-consumer stance, but I also believe that his entire campaign is undermined by his stance of expanding on copyright.

Most Americans who care don't want copyright expanded. In fact, what we need is a complete reform of the current laws in order to return us to the traditional value of artist protection. You see, the large studios don't want artists to be protected; they want their own rights as producers to trump the rights of artists, who often are not even allowed to perform their own works because of transfer agreements, which the studios essentially force out of these artists in order to ensure that they have their bottom lines maintained.

Another point to consider: the WGA strike that continues. Writers are essential to the business of entertainment. Writers feel they should be taking a larger share. And studio execs continue to take the lion's share of the proceeds. Not the artists. Not the writers who create the works. It's their creativity that makes Hollywood. Actors, in spite of their vitality, can be trained and acting talent can be taught. Writing talent requires a "feel" for the written word. This fact alone means that most writers could be actors, if they merely looked nicer. But writers are concentrating on what they write, often sacrificing their own sanity in certain moments and under certain conditions in order to really get into the minds of the characters for which they write. Hollywood, and especially the MPAA, promotes their own well-being, and doesn't support the art.

The entire idea that the MPAA, RIAA, and their ilk is doing anything that protects artists' rights is against the idea of common sense, simply because those industries at the base of their practice are exploitative. They not only exploit artists, but also consumers.

I am not in favor of doing away with copyright; that would not only be unconstitutional, it would be disastrous. What we need is to rebalance the idea of copyright with the idea that creative derivatives are not infringement. I'm not talking about the idea of "piracy" where there is a huge gap between those who want to expand and those who want to abolish. There must be a balance to the approach; a necessary retention of some parts of copyright, while eliminating others. We need a "common sense" approach to copyright, where consumers are not the enemy of copyright holders and artists are permitted access to their own works.

It is unreasonable to believe that by eliminating the access to one copyrighted work, artists are somehow motivated to produce another. Creativity doesn't work like that. Creativity is not motivated. Creativity is inspired. Creativity is an innate response to emotional stimuli. Creativity is not an emotional response to logical pressures. Creativity resides in the right, creative side to the brain. It is not rational. It doesn't operate by a strict set of rules. But on the flip side of things, neither is creativity entirely unpredictable. Only greatness in creativity is unpredictable. Creative genius does not know borders of culture, society, gender, sexuality, political status, income level, or religion. It is a part of the human soul.

But for creative genius to exist, creativity itself must not be stifled. In this sense, democracy is the ultimate crucible in which creativity can be produced. This fact of history is due in large part to the freedoms of speech and expression that we enjoy in this country, and the current regime of copyright holders want to exercise control over the very thing that proves that we are democratic and free. This is not an acceptable state of affairs.

I would invite Obama to send me his research which supports the idea that copyright should be expanded upon. I will submit only two papers, neither of which was produced here in the United States, but instead in England, where the copyright regime's controls are all but absolute at this point, and which essentially do nothing but create a rift between consumer and industry to the point that the industry itself is starting to be bypassed completely.

These two studies show their methodology, explain their reasoning completely, and leave very little to the imagination. They don't contain the leaps in logic that are required for reading the studies sponsored by the MPAA and RIAA. They really do not require the enormous profits they claim, nor is online piracy really the bugbear that these organizations claim. It's really not killing the industry. What's killing the industry is the insistence that consumers are the main enemy and must be controlled at all costs. I reject the notion on grounds of logic and reason.

We need someone like Obama, who is the most decent candidate we have right now, with regard to the front-running candidates, to really take a close look at copyright and how it really affects us, and to do the common-sense thing, since that's one of his primary position-toppers (the other candidates lack any semblance of common sense). And even though I like Obama, I'm not really ready to vote for him yet, simply because of the copyright issue and its importance to the smooth functioning of our democracy. Not to mention, I'm not a democrat.

I just hope Senator Obama can appreciate that. Because if he wants me to not write in a vote for "abstain" again this year, I'm going to have to hear him publicly say that the current system needs reform, and that he supports such reforms in order to prevent a complete meltdown of the entertainment industry and to sap the strength of the extremist views which are unnecessarily promoted and escalated by the often vindictive method which we now employ. I would support him entirely, had he not opted for openly stating that he wanted to strengthen our copyright overseas, and to increase the WTO. This is against my principles, and so I am hoping I won't have another write-in vote this year.

My biggest problem right now with the whole "intellectual property" debate is that it very much erodes the rights of creative individuals while preserving the rights of large companies. Individual rights of one should never outweigh another. Both rights must be upheld.

And so the right to dissent must also be upheld. The strength of a democracy is in the fact that we are not all one voice, nor one vision, but we all have the same goal: the well-being of our society. When we are fighting to preserve such a high aim, we must always listen to even the dissenting voices of the minority, because there is no idea that can be called worthless, excepting that is calls for violent action where violence is unnecessary. Dissent is not dissidence. Dissent is disagreeing with a policy or one idea. Dissidence is calling for the entire dismantling of an existing structure. Abolition of copyright is dissidence, in my opinion. But dismantling copyright can still occur by the rabid enforcement of such by the powers that be. Such rabid enforcement spawns the opposing extreme, and it's patently a mistake to promote it. It does not preserve the right of artists and inventors to profit from their works if the population at large doesn't support it.

Dissent is inherently linked to free speech, and as a foundation to democracy, it must be upheld to be inalienable. So when we criticize the government's operations, we're not doing anything against the government. Instead we are exercising the right which our Founding Fathers believed was God-Given: the right to freely express belief. If our beliefs are controlled, then what we have is not a democracy at all. Democracy means that the entire population rules. Democracy means that the government invests its power into the population. But those in power hate that idea. They don't like the idea that the public knows what's best for it. They don't enjoy the concept that popular control is asserted by the population itself. It's not a particularly comfortable idea to those who stand to benefit from positions of power.

But in the end, the power of democracy asserts itself in ways that can only be called beneficial to the long-term. Democracy requires a certain amount of honor be invested back to the people, who tend to be dishonorable and selfish in emulation of what they see at the head of our country. If we want a responsible people, then our leaders must also accept responsibility unshirkingly for errors in judgment. Such errors are magnified by public office, and so when the people in office don't know what their own principles are, these errors will proliferate.

And often, what's right is not what's popular. But in general, the population does know. We have the ability to offer instantaneous feedback for all options which are on the table, and yet we consistently remove this ability by failing to demand it. We don't dissent enough, because we fear rocking the boat and being viewed as unbalanced even as we call for a balance. Dissent is hard, but the preservation of the right to dissent is so utterly important to democracy that I can't imagine what our country would be like without it.

You Could Answer for Lawerence Lessig

2007-11-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm holding a contest of sorts: you, the reader, can answer questions for Lawrence Lessig, renowned copyright law expert and advocate for the continued creativity of people in spite of the severity of the copyright system.

Founder and chief advocate of the Creative Commons Public License, Professor Lessig has given numerous talks about the subject of copyright and why a private solution (such as the Creative Commons license) is necessary in today's harsh copyright climate. Though he doesn't advocate stealing of other peoples' works, he is nonetheless a strong advocate for the return of fair use and public domain works. The more I learn about the man, the more impressed I am that he's the one who has the answers.

The problem is, a man in his position is incredibly busy. I've managed to get a few words out of him here and there, but email is positively horrible when everyone wants to speak to you. He implied an agreement with me (one which I came up with), where I would get other people to answer the questions. These questions would then go through a filtering process and then the good Professor Lessig could then sign off on the answers that are closest to his position on each question. It's a creative solution to the problem of time.

The theory behind it is that if other people speak for Professor Lessig, then he can not only save time by merely having to read (I can't speak for Lessig, but my own typing speed is less than a quarter of my reading speed), and then indicate which ones are the most correct answers to the question.

The top winner of the contest will receive... a tee shirt. Completely free of charge. I'll even pay shipping. How's that for a prize? The tee shirt will say something like: "I answered Lawrence Lessig's questions and all I got was creative freedom... and this tee shirt.") And be aware that this prize comes out of my own pocket: Professor Lessig has nothing to do with this blog or its operations (other than continuing to inspire me to write, which he does without his consent).

The questions I'd like answered are below:

1) With copyright laws being enforced and changed to such a draconic level, is there any hope that they might be changed, or is the copyright system doomed to failure by abandon?

2) What differentiates fair use from infringing use under the law? Is there an actual determining factor, rather than simply the wording of the law itself?

3) It was implied at the TED speech that public domain no longer exists. What happened to public domain?

4) If the case is extremism on both sides, then what can determine prevalence? From a logical standpoint (as well as an historical one), if both extremes are wrong, then compromise is likely not going to be possible so long as the extremist voices continue. So how do we get the two sides of the equation talking to one another, if one side (or both) is offering its own olive branch?

5) This was after looking up your (CC) license, and because I'm interested in using the CC-GPL for a software package I'm working on. In the Creative Commons license, the site claims that there are no compatible licenses. However, I notice that the GPL is listed with what amounts to a Creative Commons rider. If this isn't compatibility, then by what standard is compatibility measured?

6) Using the perspective of history, we can see an equivalent to the "arms race" of the Cold War era brewing. From this same perspective, what was the most likely catalyst for change to lessen the escalation of arms?

6a) Could the same logic be applied to catalyzing a "leveling out" of the extremism in the copyright war?

Deadline: December 31, 2007 at 12 noon GMT. If you're a minute late, you won't get a prize, even if you nail the whole thing.

Entry: Drop a comment below. Each comment should answer as many of the questions as possible, and I do have moderation turned on to eliminate spam, but not stupidity. I am a firm believer in the right to speak, so even if you tell me "Your blog sux0rz, d00d!" it'll be published without changing a word.

Limitations: There is a limit of one answer per question. However, if you answer the same question multiple times, the last answer is the only on which will count.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Yes, I intentionally left the ladies out. But that doesn't mean that I'm limiting the field only to men. Please be aware that any comments seen to be sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive could be removed. And because I'm not really looking for them, these comments might slip past my amazing anti-spam technique. Speech which is offensive for a purpose related to explaining one of the questions might be okay, since I also believe in the right to offend (though I don't typically go out of my way to do so). But please limit your usage of the N-- word, the F-- word, and the rest of those to emotional outbursts and appeals to emotion.

Good luck!

A Sense of Community

2007-11-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

I finally just got sick to death of Windows. It's not that I don't think the world uses it, and it's certainly not that I don't like the bloated eye-candy interface. But it's slow, unstable as a bipolar high school cheerleader on crack, and the only programs that work really well are the ones made by Microsoft.

Except for OpenOffice.org, that is. I downloaded the free office suite from OpenOffice's web site, and I began using it. Except for not importing Microsoft's latest file formats (which my $400 copy of Office 2003 didn't do, either), it seems to work great, and can both pull in from and save to a variety of file formats. And it saves to PDF files, too. All for free. And available for both Windows and Linux. After using OpenOffice for the better part of a year (with few exceptions), I have had zero problems with data loss due to the switchover (but, dear reader, please remember to make backups before you decide to do anything that changes the way your system works).

Over the past 5 years, I've either paid for or received as payment for some of my freelance work about $12,000 in software for my Windows machine. Occasionally, I've received a duplicate license for software I've already had, but I didn't count any of that. The $12,000 (give or take a couple hundred) in software was software I actively used. And I just replaced all but one program of that by switching to Ubuntu.

The word Ubuntu is a Zulu word for 'Community', though there are lots of other meanings. The word implies that if you see a need, you fill it if you can. Likewise, you should be able to expect assistance when you need it. Community is important, and as a traditional value of all cultures, the word Ubuntu (though it comes from only one culture in South Africa) is truly a universal concept, and one that isn't difficult to grasp.

However, I began a little seriously worried because there are a lot of programs out there which are named in a similar utopian style, and they routinely fall short because not enough people actually want to make it work. However, Ubuntu has started and maintained a community which is friendly to beginners, and which offers that which is needed, if you merely look for it.

Community is the foundation to democracy. When everyone is working toward a goal, whether it's as broad as democracy or as versatile as an operating system, the only solution to any of this is to work toward the same goal. Being one community is called solidarity and this is one of the things that Ubuntu is about (both the concept and the operating system).

Accessibility is a big issue when making the switch to a GNU/Linux system such as Ubuntu. And without this accessibility, there wouldn't be an operating system I could use. But one thing that Ubuntu is lacking in is price. My $12,000 of software on my $1,000 computer is now $0 in software on my $1,000 computer, and I have the same functionality with only 4 days of downtime (well, except for Skype, which doesn't have an AMD-64 version for my version of Ubuntu yet, so aside from my not being able to talk to a couple of my clients, everything else is working great).

Which brings me to another democratic concept: government transparency. Like the software industry, the government jealously hoards the things that make it work, shrouded in layers of unnecessary secrecy and inaccessibility. Don't forget that Bush was nearly assassinated on 9/11 by a group of foriegn nationals, so I can understand where he's coming from, though I disagree with how he's going about protecting himself. But I also disagree with the way that software companies tend to rabidly protect their intellectual property, as well. The way the laws work right now creates a draconic system that encourages animosity and which is counterproductive to the aims of creativity, invention, and progress. If software companies released the source code for versions of programs they were no longer supporting, it would allow everyone to benefit: users and producers both would benefit from the increase in security that the open source community undoubtedly would bring to the program.

But there are drawbacks to open source. I'm sure of it. Uhm.... Never mind, I'll have to get back to everyone on that. Let's talk about the drawbacks to closed source.

The main drawback is Microsoft. I'm not saying their products are bad, but the big problem is that they don't publish a lot of their internal standards, and the fact that they don't release source code on anything (and encourage others to resist the open source movement as well) is a sticking point because other programmers can't learn what they're doing wrong, nor can they help Microsoft understand where their own shortcomings are.

The Open Source folks are right about a lot of things, and community is one of them. Solidarity is another. But where they routinely fall short is in action. Their ability to act cohesively is impressive, but it takes a monumental undertaking to get them interested in anything long-term or far-reaching. Basically, the bulk of the work needs to be done first, and then other programmers will weigh in with their code and review. At least, that's the general practice behind projects that I've seen.

So then we get back to how this relates to democracy. Not all communities are democracies, but all democracies have, as their basis, communities. The differences that we all have add to the diversity that's the strength of democracy everywhere. Even those who dissent add value by giving a counterpoint to the consenus, which spurs thought and gives us all something to think about. Well, at least, when it's real dissent and not just naysaying for the purpose of being a dissenting voice. This is another point I've noticed in the Open Source collection of communities: dissent for the sake of dissent. Dissent has a purpose, and that purpose is to point out a weakness so that it can be addressed. Ultimately, dissent will either logically reduce an idea to allow everyone to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks, or it will simply dissemble an idea by tearing it down with emotional arguments that have no real bearing on whether or not it will work. Of course, there is a time for that, but usually only when there is something in the way of an ethical issue. Tearing an idea down simply to tear it down is itself unethical in a democracy.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that most of my Linux experiences have brought me: a bunch of teasing and ribbing and unhelpful suggestions by people too busy to really help. I will say that there were two exceptions: the BSD community (which was my introduction to open source and free software, but which didn't work out because I'm not a programmer and production schedules didn't allow me time to read enough to make it work), and the Fedora community (which simply seemed to ignore me altogether). I made it a point to test the waters before I made the switch, and the help that I received from the Ubuntu community's forums was not only top-notch, it was support from other users, both beginners and experts alike. And now I can keep to my production deadlines while at the same time reading minimally about how my system works. And I can play with it, break it, fix it, and modify it. It's not Windows, in that there isn't a lot of hand-holding built into the system, but with an entire community active, there's not a lot of reason for it to be built in.

I actually got told that building community was akin to inviting communism one time. However, in communism there isn't a guaranteed individual ownership of property (and I don't just mean land). There is no means for someone to exceed their beginning station in life. There's no progress. People are not free to be creative and express new and (sometimes) spectacular ideas. People can't progress unless they're guaranteed both an equal footing in life and the chance to earn more, with the guarantee of creative license. People should be free to make even bad choices, because in these bad choices is the opportunity to learn. In a communist society, fascism tends to reign supreme, not because only fascists are communists, but because the entire system of communism invites stagnation .

In a democracy, people must be guaranteed the right to be creative. They have to have the right to speak against the government. They need the tools to be able to resist the government's interference in their own lives, because that's the only way that a balance between liberalism and conservatism can be maintained. An extreme conservative is a fascist (that's actually the definition: fascism is an extreme version of conservatism); and an extreme liberal is a libertarian. I've heard people tell me there are no moderates, but I'm about as moderate as they get. I believe in personal freedom, but I also believe in government. I am an extreme moderate, and the term for that is egalitarian.

The vote that people get in a communist society (one which is ideally run) counts only for declaring that a person agrees or disagrees with society. It holds no real power because in a perfectly communist state, there is no individuality: everything belongs to the community, including the individual. In a democracy, on the other hand, the community comes together because it needs and wants community. And this is why I love Ubuntu: not many people are there who don't really want to be.

The result is an open, free, and democratically-run operating system which is responsive to end user needs because the end users are the ones in charge of its development.

If only the RIAA, ASCAP and MPAA (and those who are like them) could learn that the power of popular opinion is the way to profit. They now understand that they don't have the same power that the public has. They don't control popular opinion, and any idea that they did was an illusion. For a brief moment in history, we're going to have physical media. From here on, it's digital. The community itself has spoken in cases like Jammie Thomas, Tanya Andersen, Granny Crain, and the other victims of exploitation by the system. The MAFIAA organizations are not in public favor, and it seems that their entire existence has hinged on the control over media that they've never had until recently. And now that they've got it, they're failing even faster.

And, strangely enough, the RIAA claims there was an increase in revenues at a time when there was a corresponding increase in what they've decided to label as media piracy. The shortcoming in this case is that there is no real community built by the RIAA, ASCAP, MPAA, or any of the others. Sure, there's a consumer base to draw from, but that's not the same thing. Their general draconism and fascist ideals seem to fly in the very face of democracy. And consumers know and understand this, particularly the newest generation of consumers who start buying their own music as early as age 12. Most people I know who download music do so because they don't have money to buy, but as soon as they do get money, they generally go out and get the real thing, because ownership in the new culture is a status symbol, and is thought of in a much better light than mere possession. It's a pity the RIAA doesn't allow ownership.

Because ownership would build communities of artists, rather than driving them away.

Silly fascists. Music's for playing!

The MAFIAA’s Biggest Mistake

2007-11-08T13:35:00.001-07:00

Okay, so sue me. I've changed my mind about the articles I'm publishing. The MAFIAA is an organization whose operations would normally be counted as criminal.

No, I'm not talking about the Italians, the Russians, or the Mexicans; nor is this a misspelling. I'm talking about the Music And Film Industry Associations of America (MAFIAA), which includes the RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, and a host of others based here in the United States, with hundreds of foreign counterparts between them which are funded by our patronage. The idea of stealing music that has been purchased isn't a new one, but it certainly is the foundation for the tens of thousands of lawsuits that the RIAA has specifically been found to be doing.

But the biggest mistake has been not listening to their consumers. Hundreds of millions of people (up to 15% of all internet users, which equates to about 10% of the world's population, if my figures are right) use file-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent, Gnutella, and a host of other lesser-known ones. Some actually use it legally, though the MAFIAA wants us to believe that any unauthorized use is (or should be) illegal. They've spent 55 years trying to prove that, well against the tide of consumer desire.

And they've made their consumers into their biggest enemies. Without understanding why, their prosecution of Jammie Thomas has led to their being boycotted. And now there are studies completed in Canada that show that there's a positive impact on music sales, rather than a negative impact.

So why are they still pushing to make it a criminal offense?

It's never really been about money. I realized this for the first time this past summer when ASCAP went after online radio and won, and then used that win to go after radio stations. Though they use financial means and excuses, the real issue here is control of a population that cannot be controlled. When the MAFIAA first got really organized back in the 1970's, they wanted us to believe that recording public broadcasts was illegal. The Supreme Court disagreed. And now the claims are the same, but the argument is different. Reading through the legal materials I have access to, the claims they make aren't much better. But what I do see is a government rapidly losing the high ground because they refuse to back up ordinary citizens' rights. Citizens like Ms. Thomas, a single mother who didn't even know she was being sued for months and months.

The main error here is that citizens' rights have historically trumped those of any big business, with the exception of the past 3 decades. The anti-consumerism prevalent in the courts today is the product of a huge campaign of both outright lies and misrepresentations of the truth. It's based on faulty data that nobody can seem to produce. And in fact, they've been rather tight-lipped about methodologies used, and speculation by many of the so-called pirates seems to be that they hide it because they have something to hide.

And yet they persist. If it's not about money, what's it really about?

Control.

Plainly and simply, they want to hold all the keys to all the locks on all the doors and gates. They want to be able to be the ones who determine what is or is not fair use, and they want to make sure that only those who have money are allowed to make that determination. This effectively creates a minority. It makes the average consumer unable to listen to music unless they pay for it. In their world, there would be no more radio, no internet that they didn't control, and we'd all be at their mercy as far as which web sites we visited. Subliminal messages wouldn't be illegal, though cussing up a storm would be unless it was paid for on an audio track.

The MAFIAA organizations want to make us their slaves. And I, for one, am against that.

But so are millions of others, including artists. Artists like Radiohead (independently), and Lamont (sponsored by The Pirate Bay) are starting to be increasingly aware of the level of control associated with these organizations, and they seem to be out to prove that they have what it takes to make it without the big labels. Radiohead's cancellation of their contract with EMI records, for example, is a sign that things could change. The refined studio sound is something that consumers have been moving away from for years, and this is the main sign that big-name labels should have taken for a death knell. But they can't attack individual artists for producing their own music.

The internet has changed society. Some changes have been for better, and some for worse, but the bottom line is that change was inevitable. The entire generation of Internet users who have grown up online are now entering adulthood, and they're beginning to realize just how easy it is to spot exploitative practices. Most that I've spoken to seem to be anti-corporate, which is a warning sign in my mind that big corporations are about to become a thing of the past if they don't start acting like adults instead of crying to Congress that their consumers are taking their toys away.

The failure of these companies to treat their people the way they themselves would want to be treated is a sure sign that they are caught up in issues of money instead of in good business practices. As anyone in the franchise business knows, you should leave the majority of the profits to the owner of the franchise, and take a smaller slice of a large number of pies. Instead, they've taken most of the pie before it's even given, and when they don't make money, they charge artists for the extended money they've given. Then, when they manage to sell something to consumers, they are selling for roughly three to five times what it cost to produce the package (and only 30% of that is typically intermediaries). They're the biggest, meanest dogs on the block, and their marketing model is failing miserably to cash in.

So what does any of this have to do with democracy?

Put bluntly: the people in these organizations are anti-democracy. Their conservatism crossed the line into fascism long ago, and with that change they began to lobby Congress to pass laws that are still awaiting the test of Constitutionality. Because they are self-serving and greedy, they inspire a lack of cooperation and even rebellion against them. And with their complicit behaviors, Congress is also inspiring dissent and the seeds of rebellion have been planted. This becomes dangerous when people learn how to counteract disruption techniques that the government does on a regular basis to break up smaller groups.

The current US Administration's tendency to be self-serving is also showing up in poll after poll that places Bush at the bottom of the heap. People just don't feel as though the government serves them anymore. And in this, I agree with Barack Obama. But what I don't agree with is that the government has become anti-democracy. Those in the government I've spoke to believe that by serving these companies, they ultimately protect the national product of the United States, which in turn offers citizens a better quality of life. Though this isn't actually true, it is logical. In practice, what happens is that we erode our civil liberties with five very wrong Acts of Congress (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the NET Act of 1997, the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001, and the acts of Congress passed earlier this year which essentially strip any expectation of privacy we can enjoy in our communications).

We can ill-afford to simply ignore the Constitution. We don't have the right any more, for example, to photocopy a page from a book for research purposes. We can't show off a woodcut out of an old out-of-print book because someone might still own the copyright. We are no longer allowed to creatively derive anything from music. We can't make backups of music or software CD's, and wear out the backups instead of the originals. All of that in the United States is illegal.

Fair use under the law is basically no more. There are some limited fair use rights, but the long history of traditional fair use is now illegal. This is an erosion of free expression (and therefore, free speech), and it deserves our attention. We should work to change laws over time to return these individual rights, so that the music industry can continue to create products we enjoy. We should encourage the music industry to make radical changes to their model in order to encourage artists to produce, rather than discouraging them from producing elsewhere. We should point out the exploitations against us, because if the population as a whole is saying something, the government must listen. If it doesn't, it's no longer a democracy.

Republican democracy or no, our country is at a turning point in its history. Either we'll continue to become one of the most open and creative societies in existence, or we will make ourselves into the new Soviet Union, fooling ourselves into believing we're the best simply because we said so and we have one or two nice things that don't actually balance the ills that occur.

Make no mistake: the enemy is not government, nor even big business in general, but these few specific organizations and individuals who insist on changing the laws to accommodate their practices which would be criminal if they were anyone else. The enemy is the fascist mindset that every aspect of everything must be controlled, and that individual rights have no meaning in the face of (and I quote) "larger interests".

The very definition of fascism is that individual rights are secondary to state interests, as it was defined by "Grandfather" Mussolini. Today, the word fascist is considered a political slur, but the truth of the matter is that these organizations and individuals are indeed acting fascist, according to the definition. At the time, we were against Mussolini, and we took out his regime fairly efficiently. Democracy will always win, if it's organized enough to care. Individuals can care, but until we get organized as consumers and voters to take back our government, we are not deserving of democracy and will continue to lose to fascism until there's nothing recognizably democratic about the way we operate. We're headed to become just like China, and I (for one) don't think that's really a democracy, in spite of what their constitution says.

Associating Freely

2007-11-07T01:14:00.001-07:00

People are often amazed when I dismiss gossip. I don't tend to like gossip in the first place, as it usually does more harm than good. However, I also surprise people when I express offense at guilt by association. One of our basic freedoms is free association. The main reason for this is because there is an enormous difference between talking to someone and accepting their ideas. Even best friends don't agree on everything.

The human mind is an interesting mechanism. It stores data, processes input, and allows us to interpret the world. It also colors that interpretations based on what we believe to be true. The human mind also adopts what it sees as the best way to survive, and to ensure the survival of the species. People often tell me about murders, and how humans are the only animal in the world who operate on revenge. These same people tell me about how anger is out of control, and they point to the increased violence in our societies that occurs in spite of a reported drop in the crime rate.

I associate with a lot of kinds of people. I talk to felons: embezzlers, tax evaders, drug addicts, and even active drug dealers. I'm actually good friends with a few addicts and tax evaders. I don't agree with their life choices, but then that's my right. And it's their right to pursue those choices. I've made it clear that I will have no part of those things in my own life, and for the most part they honor and respect that. I don't have to threaten them with exposure: I don't snitch. I'm sure if I did, my life would be forfeit.

But why in the world would I want to talk to these people?

First and foremost, I'm a politician, and I always have been, even though I've never held or sought office, and even though I am often critical of our political system. Criticizing the system doesn't mean that I believe it's the wrong system. It just means I think it could be improved, and I would like to help it to improve. It's an ideal democracy that encourages its citizens, from the lowly street urchin to the loftiest political figure, to participate in governmental processes to make everything better. Our system is great because we allow input by the population. It's only dissidence if you actively proscribe the dismantling of the government, or violent action of any kind. In a democracy, that's the way it actually works.

Another reason I talk to these people is because they are a minority in the group that I hang out in. The majority of the people I talk to are upstanding, law-abiding citizens with solid ideas about how things should work—and I disagree with them. So, I talk to these others in order to find out just why they disagree with the status quo, and in a lot of cases they have excellent points. Well, one or two. Most of the criminal element I speak to have bizarre ideas about how things actually work. The largest exception to these are the tax evaders (whom I still don't agree with yet, because I don't ever simply accept what someone tells me as true unless there's a compelling reason).

But people claim that I'm the exception. To that I say: Bullshit. I keep my own mind strictly because I am involved with so many kinds of people. I'm not a part of their groups, even if I am a member of their circles. Human minds tend to adopt the best ways to survive, and the real survival method in this case is to adopt the attitudes and ideas of those around you. Much of what I know and believe is based in observation of people, and much of it's based on whom I talk to.

Association does increase the chances that you agree with those around you, but it also increases the chances that a group can change the minds of an individual. If we really want to rehabilitate criminals, the best way is to isolate them within a group of successful people who can then help them change their minds. The best way to change a large group is to become the majority: not because you wield strength, but because the power of two human minds to facilitate change in one mind is powerful.

Yet I am constantly disallowed access to people whom I consider successful. Largely, this is due to our litigious society and the desire to legally protect one's self. Another part of this equation, however, is the fact that their success might create competition because they understand just how powerful the drive to survive and be the best competitor actually is. They are successful because they limit this competition. People are still driven by instinct.

When I associate with these criminal types, I also can't use their names or occupations as sources for information. When I talk to my upstanding friends, I typically say only "a friend" told me or said such-and-such. I get some really awesome ideas from these people, and I also get ideas that sound good until I run them past my other friends, who tear them into logical pieces. Or they disagree, but they can't really say that there's anything wrong with any portion of the arguments. I'll admit, some of the conclusions are unsettling.

But recently I was criticized and told I was no longer welcome at a friend's house because of whom I chose to associate with. This surprised me because the person who told me this was a pro-democracy politician whose primary platform seemed to be civil liberties, including the freedom of association implied by the First Amendment for the very purpose of promoting democracy. A liberal politician, he fought for my right to vote. And so when he expressed concern about my associations, it set me off-balance. When I tried to defend my choices, he told me I wasn't allowed back at his home until I stopped associating with someone I've known for 12 years—and though this person is thought to be dealing in drugs, I can say that drugs isn't what this person's crime of choice would be.

I also happen to know that he's struggling to stay on the right side of the law, and that he works a dead-end job with few benefits and no health insurance in order to pay rent and utilities he can't always afford. He drives a flashy car because it was inherited from his grandfather, and he's gotten to the point that the car sits in his driveway because he not only can't afford insurance, gas prices are still high enough he bikes to work (which is healthier for him anyway). The politician doesn't know this. All he knows is that this friend of mine lives in a bad neighborhood and has a high-end car sits unharmed in his driveway (unless you count the time a month or so back when it was keyed). If he was dealing in drugs, he wouldn't groan and complain about how much he could be making if he just crossed the line one more time. He wouldn't even tell me about it. He might not even talk to me because of whom I know. And he'd fail his urinalysis, too (since he's still on parole).

My associations, in both cases, are a source of liability for me. But that liability so far has been limited to social liability. In a democracy, the freedom to associate is basic and fundamental. It's also the means by which rational discourse can occur. There isn't a compelling reason to hold associations against someone, particularly when those associations benefit those involved by opening up a dialogue.

The next article will have to do with voting. I voted today, and although I personally talked to over 2,300 people in my city, with ZERO who wanted the incumbent mayor, that mayor won by a narrow 180 votes. And when I looked at the numbers, I noticed that I spoke to a considerable number of those who voted. But if my sample size was zero, how did the mayor win? I'll have an answer next time. I hope.

Religious Freedom Means Tolerance

2007-11-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I know… I promised a blog entry on religions. I said some pretty rotten things in my last post, mostly to try to get people who read that post to read this one. Mostly, I was blowing smoke and standing up mirrors. A day later, those mean, rotten, nasty comments aren't real. I'm very respectful, actually, of others' beliefs. I couldn't bring myself to tear down someone else's beliefs, even if I did lob a few choice bombs to rile people up a little.

So here it is: if you want to be free to have your religious preference protected in the United States under the Bill of Rights, then you are going to have to tolerate the religious preferences of others. Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, Animist, Wiccan… or any of the other hundreds of thousands of other religious preferences out there, you have to protect the beliefs you don't agree with so that you can maintain the ones you do agree with. Notice I didn't say "religions" because Atheism isn't a religion; it's a religious preference. Atheists might still balk a little, but lack of religion is, fundamentally, a religious choice.

Those who are familiar with your religious works (or good philosophically-supporting ones, if you don't have religious works), please get a copy. If that means a new browser window, fine. Just keep this one open.

Now, in your philosophical or religious works, I'd like to point out the similarities in all of them. All of them have the benefit of the individual in mind, but also bear heavily on the good of the whole (regardless of the different methods used to accomplish this aim). They all believe that there is a better way than stumbling blindly around, believing things that aren't true (and again, they disagree about what is or isn't true in a lot of cases). They all teach things that are valuable and which empower people. And all of them are convincing to one person or another.

Now, switch books. If you're Buddhist or Hindu, grab something from one of the non-Eastern philosophies; if you're Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, grab one of the pagan holy books. As long as it's something you're not familiar with, it'll work for this exercise. And it won't be comfortable.

When you read this other work (and read it you must, or the exercise won't work), give it an empirical run-down. List the points you personally agree with, and the ones you don't. If you're Christian, for example, and reading the Tao te Ching, you can list things like "doesn't mention God" as things you disagree with, and "help other people selflessly" as something you do agree with. There is likely to be a good-sized list. But if you're not honest about it, you're likely going to harm only yourself (since I'm not coming around and checking your work).

Then read your own holy works again. See how many of the things you agree and disagree with can be settled by that work. Chances are, almost all of them will settle in nice and neat. It's not about which religion or religious belief is right and wrong; it's about finding principles that are universally true. These universal principles mean that no religion can have a corner on the "Whole Truth" because at their foundations, we humans are the ones who must interpret what we believe to be true from the best information we have available. The point of this exercise is about looking for things that are different from what you believe, and yet still good and desirable.

Tolerance of what others believe means working together to understand the differences. Understanding, for example, the difference between schools of thought in Islam means studying the Koran. Knowing why the Chassid believe what they do and why that differs from other sects of Judaism means you have to understand the Torah and its history. Know why Kali worship isn't well-received means reading up on both the Upanishads and the Baghavad-Gita. Understanding that Buddhists aren't supposed to embrace Buddhism too closely, means studying the hundreds of texts of that religion. And all of this together means that a life-long study of religions is needed, in addition to other things.

There is one result that's been of value: I've grown stronger in my own beliefs by learning about the differences in belief of others. I've also freed myself of the intolerance that many people have. My only intolerance now is intolerance. That's right: intolerance will not be tolerated.

So it pisses me off when people try to say one religion is "better" than another, or that theirs is the "only true way" that things can happen. While I believe that there is a well-defined path through the forest, being on the path is not necessarily the best course of action at all times. There are many ways through a forest to get to the same destination. The path just means you're not likely to get lost on the way if you're in unfamiliar territory.

Likewise, if you rely on God, Goddess, Brahma, Krishna, Allah, Jehoweh, the Buddha, the Jade Emperor, your Higher Self, or whomever else you might believe in, for guidance, then you are going to use their path. And there are many paths through the forest, and many ways to avoid becoming the victim of pitfalls and perils. There is good to be found in all religious preferences: even in Atheism, the power of rationality, logic, and self-worth that are promoted to empower individuals to act in the absence of an all-seeing or all-knowing metaphysical entity have quite a high value and worth. And I will say that Atheists were something I tended to shy away from until one taught me how to be logical. But it backfired: instead of diminishing my beliefs, it strengthened them significantly. And it bolstered my understanding of personal experiences, and extended my tolerance to include the benefit of secular logic.

But that's just me, right?

No. I have made a study the past few years of democracy, which is why I've elected to write this blog in the first place. And I've discovered that democracy is more important to human progress than any other force in history. There cannot be any force of religion that can claim a corner on democracy, because the principles of democracy are universally-true. The differences, whether compatible or incompatible, are what make humanity resilient and able to bounce back. Mere tolerance of those differences means that the human race as a whole increases its survivability. Embracing those differences would mean even better survivability, because we would not only understand that these differences exist and accept them, we would really listen to one another's ideas instead of dismissing the ideas because of whom they came from.

Democracy isn't about borders, or politics, or religions. But it makes all of those things possible, desirable, and even beneficial to us. It allows us to embrace the differences that are most certainly the product of progress, and it allows us to use those differences to progress even more. But religious freedom is only one part of the equation.

There is a larger set of freedoms that are ultimately at the heart of democracy. This larger set is lumped together under the heading "belief" (as in: "freedom of belief"). The right to believe differently is one of those basic, fundamental things that is required in order for democracy to truly exist. It depends upon the right to privacy (the right to be free from governmental intrusion on daily life: q.v., my last post). It depends on free speech. And most of all, it depends upon the tolerance of others. Without the right to believe something differently, democracy is simply not possible. You see, this is because if we have groups who believe differently, we are going to arrive at something either universally true, or we are going to arrive at a peaceful compromise. The alternative is to fail to have democracy, and to fail utterly at maintaining freedom.

So, moving away from religion, let me take three things that I don't personally hold in my own belief system: neo-Nazism, homosexuality, and Satanism. These three are offensive to one group or another. I am personally offended by hate speech. The thought of homosexuality actually disgusts me. I find that most (but far from all) Satinists are puerile sissies with a severe lack of self-discipline and an inability to accept anything that might benefit more than one person at a time. I'm entitled to these opinions under a democracy.

But they are entitled to have their opinions, too. I will uphold the right to be a Nazi, even though I strongly disagree with the Nazis. I will uphold the right to be homosexual, in spite of the fact that I don't have much in the way of leanings that direction. Satanism is little more than a rebellious version of Christianity, but I uphold the right of the adherents to that belief to believe it. How can I do this?

Well, the reason I'm able to do this is because I'm a religious minority with my own minority sexual proclivities, and I don't believe in the concept of "race", which by itself puts me into a fairly large minority. I'm not going to go into much more detail about that, but suffice it to say that by protecting these others' rights to believe what they believe, I'm allowed to expand my own understanding of human nature. Likewise, permitting these people to explore their own personalities and beliefs helps us to get to the truth of things, instead of blindly adhering to things that are untrue.

We're discovering, for example, that sexual proclivities are largely based in genetic predisposition, and that some people may actually not have a choice as to their sexual preferences. But even while these may not be choices, we still have a choice about how to handle those proclivities. Denial of sexual urges, we're finding, is harmful to us. Again, the way we handle these urges is the issue, rather than having the urges themselves. Radically zealous Christians, for example, tend to use one minute passage of the Bible to show that homosexuality is a sin. But on closer inspection, we see that it's not the law of God that's the issue, but the law of Moses. People think they're the same thing; they're not.

Moses sought to try to give people an understanding of how God's laws worked, and to interpret them. However, he had his own biases and prejudices to work in there and (being human), I'm sure that in more than one case he was injecting his own stuff in there instead of keeping it purely God's laws (the 10 commandments). God didn't say "thou shalt be married under the laws of mankind" in order to be able to have children. What God did say was that you shouldn't be jealous. Marriage actually helps prevent jealousy by drawing a mental barrier of ownership. And that ownership goes two ways.

But people are now realizing that we can't own one another and still be happy. We have to permit happiness; we cannot force it. We have to decide for ourselves what is right, and we don't like being owned. For a lot of us, it's against our essential programming. Human nature demands self-direction, even if that self-direction is against our own best interests. If we don't have that self-direction, then we rebel. Therefore, a parent's duty is to teach how to conduct that self-direction. Many parents believe that this self-direction is taught by forcing a child to conform to the will of others, but this only leads to a rebellious nature later on. Self direction is taught by finding these universal principles (like those of democracy) and applying them in a personal way to personal situations. It is only in this way that we are able to deal effectively with societies and learn to integrate in a healthy way, even while at the same time not accepting everything that others tell us as the absolute truth. This simply is not rational.

The pro-democracy folks in Asia, for example, must understand that the government will not simply release its absolute authority over the people and relinquish that power at a whim. They have to have proof. They have to have time to mull it over. And they must learn to accept that those truths are true by illustration in the long term, rather than being forced to change. The alternative is Tiananmen Square in June of 1989. China still hides the ugliness of that night, but I think this is a mistake. And expressing this opinion is my right as a member of a democracy.

Suppressing information like this hurts China, and because I believe in the beauty of Chinese culture and the high level of dignity that Chinese history has typically held, I find this suppression harmful because it reduces the chance that anyone will be able to learn from that lesson. And because the lesson here is suppression, I fear that China may be doomed to repeat it at some point in the future when the current generation's memory no longer brings the ugliness of the lesson to the surface. Like Kung Fu, history can sometimes only teach by a limited amount of pain and suffering.

Likewise, in Burma there are only so many bullets they can fire before they finally run out. And the fact that there are no weapons on the side of the pro-democracy population there is a testament to the power of democracy. It frightens the military regime in Burma to believe that their way is not the most correct way. And like China, outside interference may do more harm than good. I find the UN's handling of the sovereignty of Burma acceptable and correctly-principled. I support democracy in Burma, but if such democracy is forced on them, then it will certainly never be lasting. China, probably better than anyone, recognizes this, but I suspect they have their own agenda where this is concerned. I would rather assist the junta in a peaceful resolution of the conflict than risk an all-out war. If they simply kill all of the people who oppose them, they will eventually run out of subjects.

The days of Myanmar are numbered at this point. The will of the people to rid itself of the military dictatorship that now rules the country with an iron hand has been heard. A government can only last for as long as the people permit it. Many would rather die than accept the military's rule. Having a military in a country such as Burma is important; but it shouldn't be all-encompassing. The peoples' inalienable right to believe has trumped every bullet in Myanmar's arsenal. Some rights are inalienable by definition. When people learn there is a better way, they will want it. Power cannot exist if there is no one to have power over. It's now only a matter of time before Myanmar becomes Burma once more. It may be tomorrow, or decades away, but I'm not too worried: it will happen, and the price will be higher than either side can really afford. But, in the words of one of our founding fathers in the United States: "The tree of liberty must occasionally be fed by the blood of patriots and of tyrants: it is [the tree's] natural manure."

We must uphold the right to believe differently. This means tolerating China's suppression of information. It means allowing Burmese people to accept and reject their own government. It means helping those who believe differently to not become victims, but instead creating martyrs for the religion of tolerance that is democracy. Every drop of blood spilled by those in power is added to the scale against them by the tide of the will of the people at large. When they've had enough, they'll speak. And it'll be bloody, and a hard fight. But if even one government realizes that the power of democracy cannot be held by any central authority, then that's the place where democracy is real. That's the place where I want to be.

So far, America really does have a corner on the market, where democracy goes. We have far to go, but we're the closest so far. We can't change China or Burma. We can't force the world to accept our ways. What we can do is to support and encourage. If we interfere, we subvert the entire reason behind democracy. It has to be the free choice of others, because it's the greatest choice anyone can make. Until we can let go of the differences that divide us and embrace the differences that allow us to be separate and yet unified—many individuals supporting the cause of being individuals together—then we cannot have, and probably don't deserve to have, democracy. We need to learn that our strength is not in a unified front, but in a consensus agreement to pursue a goal. Presentation of a unified front means failure to adhere to the principles of democracy that allow differences of opinion and belief to make us stronger. It might take a slightly longer time to arrive at a decision, but if we listen to all objections, and actually invite these objections in, then "duke it out" with logic and reason, then what we will have in the end is something as close to perfection as possible.

In a democracy that is operated on entirely correct principles, disagreement is the rule, but the power flows from the bottom up. This creates a foundation that is unshakeable. This creates something stronger than what we now have. This creates a perfect democracy.

My next post will be about freedom of association and how it ties in with freedom of speech, privacy, freedom of belief, and I'll include a brief run-down of how consensus should work in a democracy.

Free Speech and Profanity

2007-11-03T03:00:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of people who believe that profanity should be protected by free speech. I happen to disagree, but I also disagree that it should fail to have the protection of free speech. This seeming contradiction is due to my own belief in something else that democracy has to offer: freedom of choice.

If you don't like what someone is saying, you always have the right to shut them off, to go somewhere else, to ignore them, or to confront them. The idea that mere words, though vulgar or obscene, should be limited because they are offensive flies in the face of the principle of free speech. While I disagree with shouting a string of obscenities for the sake of shouting them, I think people who are really angry should be able to shout vulgarities in their speech, if only to express the emotional impact that a particular topic has had on them. In addition to showing a person's emotional state, vulgarities show a state of mentality, and such mentality can attract like-minded individuals or repel those who disagree. Society must police itself if it wants to eliminate the vulgar, not rely on the laws of government to restrict the right to cuss.

I swear sometimes, I'll admit it. Many people who read the foregoing believe that I'm in favor of swearing. I'm not. I'm simply against the idea that government should be involved in its abolition. The appropriate use of swearing is to shock people to their senses by using a strong word. Take "balderdash" for example. Balder was a god from the Nordic pantheon, way back before the Christians converted everyone in Europe by force. Balder was impervious to harm because Balder's mom extracted a promise from everything in the world. Everything, that is, except for Mistletoe, which was considered an unimportant tree parasite... and since dear old mom had already asked the Oak trees on which mistletoe grows, it was thought to extend. But then old Loki came along, trickster god that he was, and made an arrow out of the stuff. Meanwhile, the other gods were busy throwing rocks and shooting arrows made of things like oak and aspen at Balder. It was a great trick, watching inanimate objects uphold their promises to do no harm to the God of Beauty and Courtesy. But the blind god, Forseti, felt left out of the fun.

A woman named Bestla came up and offered Forseti a shot at Balder with a bow and arrow. Forseti protested on account of the fact that he was blind. Bestla offered to aim the arrow for him, so that he could be sure to aim it right at Balder. He agreed, and she did, and the arrow flew... and struck Balder right in the heart, killing him instantly. The shock and outrage that flew throughout the courtyard called for Forseti's death, and then Bestla's. But Bestla was not her real name. Her real name was Loki, and she'd tricked Forseti by having him shoot an arrow made of mistletoe right into Balder's heart. Mistletoe is therefore called balderdash. How it came to be used for kissing under is related, but not important to the point I'm trying to convey. But the cuss word from the 1800's implied so much more than that.

The word in the 1800's implied nonsense, but it also implied that someone or something was parasitic in nature. It further implied that this parasitic nature was the cause of all evils and ills, not just the immediate problem, and that whomever had suggested the item which caused the utterance of that horrifically obscene word was about to kill God. The word was not used in polite society. The closest word we have today has less implied, far less background, and a more crude direct meaning. That word is "bullshit".

However, in the 1800's, balderdash was considered much more offensive of a word, because it required a knowledge of its background and how it came to be in order to be offended. But in the American West, it fell from disfavor and was replaced by "bullshit" as the choice for swearing, particularly because male bovine excrement was actually pretty well everywhere. Mistletoe wasn't. Therefore, in the absence of familiarity with what mistletoe even is, we stopped using a swear word. Ironically, the word fuck is used today as a catch-all swear word in almost exactly the same way, though with an entirely different background and meaning.

The point is, obscene words change with culture. Laws generally do not. Old laws don't often get reviewed and thrown out with the trash. Even bad laws which hold no relevance to modern culture and which are often the target of ridicule are rarely removed. And bad laws exist, as do laws which are poorly worded. Laws that try to limit obscene materials and fail miserably can often attribute that failure with a lack of familiarity with that material. It's a conundrum: either you review it so you can be well-informed, and possibly violate your personal principles in the process; or you don't review it and make a law which may be irrelevant the moment it passes into law.

There isn't a really great solution, except possibly to ask people who are familiar with it about whether or not it would stop it. Those who are familiar with it and still against it can often tell you. And if there's nobody familiar with it who is against it, then what you have is a perfect product, and it deserves investment instead of restriction.

Obscenity laws, especially where they relate to language, just don't make sense. Laws that restrict nudity to artistic exhibits make more sense than removing nudity altogether. We're born naked, and nudity is a natural state of being. There is nothing wrong with the display of the human body for purposes of art. I've personally attended a viewing of the Statue of David. I'm a guy, and I certainly have no homosexual leanings, but that's a body I think I'd kill to have. Well, maybe after just a few more cheeseburgers...

Likewise, artistic expression that contains offensive words should be labeled as such. I'm not against labeling something to prevent unintended offense. However, there are times when we need to be offended. I myself get offended on a regular basis. I had a neighbor, recently, who told me that if he accepted my hospitality, he'd be disrespecting himself. I found myself wondering if he had a habit of refusing hospitality, or if he simply didn't like me. And then several negative implications of what he said hit me. I was incensed. He later asked me for my hospitality, which, rather than extending again, I declined to extend, politely pointing out that his rude statement didn't sit well with me, though I didn't mind him visiting. I didn't swear. I didn't need to. My simple statement said it all.

If people are taught correct principles, they tend to use them. One of the principles I was taught was tolerance, and another was patience. I was patient, in that I didn't blow up. I felt angry and offended, but I was patient enough so that my refusal had its full impact. And I was tolerant, because while we disagreed and there were consequences, he is still free to believe what he will about the comment that was made. No law needed. No obscenity required. See? Social values work. Tolerance doesn't mean allowance. It means limitation of allowance. It's another one of those fundamental principles of democracy, whether in our country or another.

Swearing is unpleasant. It's supposed to be. It expresses an emotional impact that those with limited vocabularies and limited time to formulate a concrete idea can use in order to achieve the same results as my long-winded speech. All of the above was summed up by a friend of mine:

"Laws against swearing are bullshit. They don't fucking need to exist."

And that, as they say, is that.

My next post is going to be about a topic we all love to argue about: religious freedom in the US. Those of you with strong opinions on the subject, prepare arms for my comment box: I'm not about to pull any punches. I'm religious, proud of the fact, and pissed off at the zealots who think it's fun to say that everyone else is going to Hell. I'm going to bring my Bible, Torah, Koran, Baghavad-Gita, Tao te Ching, Poetic Edda, and the Upanishads. It'll be fun, I promise... well, not for everyone, I'm sure. I also plan to bring rational denial to the table, which is more popularly known as atheism. I'm no atheist, but those who fail to listen to them (or any other religious group... yes, calling atheists a religious group pisses off a lot of people) is going to be limiting.

That article will also be about diversity, racism, intolerance, and maintenance of group identity. I'm gonna slam people. Well, politely. Until next time!

An Essay On Privacy in the USA

2007-11-02T04:15:00.000-06:00

Yes, this is a long post. But, I hope, worth it.

The claim that privacy is not a Constitutionally-guaranteed right is a valid one, since the word "privacy" is not used anywhere in any of the documents our Founding Fathers used as the basis for the Constitution. But the facts of the matter are that we are still guaranteed a level of privacy in that the government isn't supposed to be able to snoop into any kind of private affairs without both due process and a warrant. This raises the question of warrantless wiretapping and creates an issue of Constitutionality. Yet our president maintains that we're not afforded a right to privacy under the United States Constitution. I happen to disagree, and here's why:

The definition of privacy in the Constitutional context is to be free from intrusion, interference, or influence of government in our personal spaces. This includes communications, and the sovereignty of a person within their home. However, a warrant can be issued that temporarily suspends that right if there is a probable cause or provable belief that something illegal is happening. Thus, the government's ace-in-the-pocket is to have a warrant before they invade what is essentially sovereign space. We need an oath or affirmation that they believe something is happening, and that's the only purpose they can be there for.

For example, if a police officer believes that there is a drug dealer living in a certain apartment, that officer can swear out a warrant for the property which covers drugs, drug residues, drug paraphernalia, weapons, and the drug dealer himself. The officer then typically knocks politely on the door (and occasionally uses a battering ram for knocking not-so-politely when they require the element of surprise to prevent the stashing of drugs), and enters the property. But let's say that instead of drugs, they find an illegal gambling operation instead. The officer didn't specify any gambling equipment, and his discovery precludes him from being able to use what he sees as evidence against the occupants in a legal case. In spite of the fact that he sees illegal activity, he cannot place anyone under arrest, and he has to disregard anything he sees that isn't contained in the warrant.

But in recent years, officers have received expanded power that allow them to "camp" on the spot and obtain another warrant for the new criminal activity while they wait. So it's not drugs, but the occupant of the property is still likely going to jail for breaking the law, this time on a somewhat lesser charge, in the eyes of most citizens.

The original intent was that officers should obtain solid proof before the fact. They should have enough of an idea of what's happening that such a mistake isn't made in the first place. The fact that there was a lot of traffic in and out of the property is a sign that something is happening, it's true, but the real question is whether or not that the something is illegal activity, such as drugs. Officers are no longer allowed to use their own judgment under the law, because the people have learned that police forces can be sued. What this means is that there is an "us versus them" mentality, and one which should not be acceptable. Officers should respect the dignity and sanctity of a person's home enough to get all of the facts before they enter.

Governmental intrusion into a person's home is still relatively rare here in the United States. In other countries, where there is no protection, officers may walk in at will. England is the only country in the world where individual privacy has been held to a higher standard than ours, and still has a long way to go in order to afford a level of autonomy that allowed democracy to take root. You see, privacy is so fundamental and so basic a need for democracy that any encroachment on individual privacy from government intrusion at any level, or by anyone in a position of power should be considered an assault on democracy as a whole. By removing the ability of people to be private in their own homes, we effectively prevent the very thing that creates democracy: free thought.

Knowing that the police cannot simply barge in on you for no reason is a comfort that only those in a democracy can know. Such relaxation allows individuals to arrive at thoughts they would not normally be able to have. Having lived in an area where privacy was not permitted to this extent, I can say that it alters one's ability to think clearly and rationally about things. But on the flip side of that coin, it also enhances some kinds of neuroses, so too much sanctity probably isn't a good thing. However, people who live in a home should not expect privacy from one another, because of the nature of living together. The expectation should be that those in power cannot intrude at will, be they landlords, employers, businesses, or government. The sanctity of the home has been upheld numerous times and in numerous ways, and yet the Bush Administration persists in its insistence that there's nothing wrong with warrant-less wiretapping. The expectation has been set, they say, that our private communications are now forfeit. Such intrusion is against the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This is essentially the entire scope of the right to privacy in the United States. But we need to look at the original intent in order to really understand what they meant.

First and foremost, the security of a person against unreasonable search and seizure means that unless officers have a clear idea that a person is carrying something illegal, they cannot simply search that person. They must first obtain a warrant to go through someone's pockets. I see this provision violated all the time on television cop shows, though it's justified because officers were looking for weapons instead of the drugs they found. Well, no warrant, no arrest. They can confiscate the drugs as contraban, but the real issue here is that unless they had reasonable suspicion that someone was actually carrying the drugs, the drugs should be inadmissible in court. As detrimental to society as that sounds to some people, the price of democracy is that right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure. Please note that it does not say "government" anywhere in the Fourth Amendment: this implies that the freedom is inalienable, and applies to pretty much anyone.

The right to be secure in their houses against unreasonable search and seizure means that nobody (government or otherwise) can intrude on a person's home. Police seem to believe that if an individual citizen makes a discovery, that's admissible in court. In general, I tend to agree. However, if someone enters a property with the intent of informing the police or other authority about anything in there, then they are acting in the capacity of infringing upon a person's privacy. A person's home should be inviolate, and this intent that I mentioned means that they are acting on the authority of those in power. It means this shouldn't be admissible in court, period.

The right to be secure in one's papers means that personal items, identity documents, correspondence, and other items that aren't really anyone else's business should be kept away from the eyes of those who don't really have a compelling need. The real sinker here is the implication of correspondence. In my estimation, all communications have the right to be free from interference and intrusion by those in power. You can't operate a business if nothing you do is private. You can't operate a political party if your competition is in power, particularly if you want to prevent those in power from overrunning the freedoms you enjoy. If you have a secret that you want to hold until an opportune time, it should be allowed under the Fourth Amendment, if you're one of the people to which the rights are ascribed.

The last part, the right to be secure in one's effects, is intended to be a catch-all. Today, personal effects include computer data, which could also be construed as being one's papers. The Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that people could pass along information freely. They also wanted to ensure that someone's personal effects couldn't be seized. With the USA-PATRIOT Act in full swing, seizures of small personal effects (like granny's nail clippers at an airport) became the norm. I suspect that in spite of that fact, the seizures in such cases are unreasonable.

An interesting quote to round some of the point up and link it to the next bit is given to us by Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, in 1787 (this would be 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution), in a letter to William Smith: "[W]hat country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?"

In order to secure a free democracy, privacy is (as I've already said) fundamental. The government is worried about home-grown terrorists and those plotting against the administration in violent ways, it says, but the fact of the matter is that the more we impede individual rights to privacy, the more people find ways to circumvent any system put into place that violate it. By preserving the right to privacy in the first place, we effectively deny any refuge to those plotting violence for any time, except if they start acting secretively. The difference between maintaining privacy and being secretive is a semantic one, to be sure, but one which bears attention. I'll use the 9/11 attacks as an example of this principle.

On the morning on September 11th, 2001, six journalists approached President Bush's hotel in Florida. It was six in the morning, well before any of the attacks later in the day occurred. Nobody was aware that anything special was about to occur. These journalists claimed to have scheduled a poolside interview with President Bush, but they did not appear on the schedule for that day (nor any other). The journalists were denied access on that basis. The Secret Service, in protecting the privacy of the president from the media (who is very much in power, in spite of some opinions to the contrary), they ultimately saved his life. You see, these six journalists were all of Middle-Eastern descent, and they matched the descriptions of people who, only days before, has succeeded in assassinating a leader in Pakistan (if memory serves... I could be wrong on this, and I didn't look up my facts, because the location isn't really important to the point).

Later that day, 3,300 people died. This does not include the 200 who died in one embassy bombing a few years before, nor the 2,000 who died in airline terrorism in the previous decade, or the nearly-100 soldiers who had died in the line of duty, or any of the countless other civilians who have died for the cause of furthering terror in our homeland, or who were US citizen... and this doesn't include those who were citizens of other countries either. I'll put the number on it of 10,000 Americans dying by the directives of one terrorist leader. By comparison, Bush is indirectly responsible for the deaths of some 35,000 civilians, most of whom were killed accidentally because they didn't conform to rules we'd tried to notify everyone about. Our soldiers are fighting a war that had nothing to do with terrorism until we got involved.

But I digress. In the weeks and months that followed, it became clear that our very way of life is offensive to these people. They attacked us because their leader uses an unpopular religious philosophy to justify political activity. In the 1700's, we called such acts piracy, and the thought of the day was that we would simply pay them off and they'd leave us along. Except that they didn't. So, in 1799, we wiped out the Barbary Pirates. We didn't declare war. We didn't tell anyone or brag about it. We expressed sorrow that we had to do it, in fact. We didn't invoke any kind of rights or make any new laws. Congress didn't really get involved. President Jefferson simply declared them enemies of the state, and we went and sank their ships. Every one. We didn't stop to discuss terms of surrender. To this day, our policy is that we don't negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists only understand one language: terror. We kill terrorists, rather than negotiate. That's been the policy for 208 years as of this writing, and always has. The war we've been waging in the Middle East is a mockery of not only this policy, but of the entire system of democracy.

The only accomplishment of Bush's administration, really, is the significant erosion of civil rights by bullying his way through the courts and Congress to get his way. People just don't think that it's true, until they are personally affected. Bush did exactly what good old Ben Franklin warned us about: he traded our civil liberties for temporary measures designed to increase security. Today, our civil liberties are diminished, and the security promised by the USA-PATRIOT Act has yet to surface. We're at a constantly-high state of alert in our country. The real threat is not from al-Qaeda or even domestic terrorism: it's the man occupying the office of President of the United States. The Presidential office is one I respect and even uphold in my daily conversations with people. But I've lost significant respect for the person in that office. Shame on you, George!

If Bush had really been looking out for the security of our country, he would have given us measures to protect ourselves. He would not have decreased the ability of our population to speak to one another, but would instead have armed us with correct information about what was really happening. He was not interested in upholding democracy; he was interested only in his own bottom line.

There's another organization that operates like this: the RIAA. Their recent activities with Jammie Thomas show that they not only are really concerned with controlling the popular tastes. They aren't interested in truth, or justice, or even money. What they want is power. And powerful they are: they recently assisted in a bid to try to cut radio at the knees. Combined with an overabundant consolidation of radio networks, we're really at kind of a loss as to how to keep radio going unless we protect it. And radio stations are actually the basis of our telecommunications infrastructure, so their importance cannot be understated. But that's for another post.

The RIAA uses techniques that invade privacy. Cary Sherman, the president of the RIAA, claims that any idea that using software to intercept communications which are then used to secretly obtain the names of people who may never be notified so that they can prepare an adequate defense and preserve their own evidence, is "bizarre" (and that's a direct quote). The RIAA is in power. Heck, it's even on the right side of the law. But the one thing that they are lacking is a sense of ethical and dignified treatment of people. Their aggressive tactics only alienate them, and people already know that what they do isn't defending the artists' rights, because the companies associated with the RIAA typically take all rights to any work that the artist produces in exchange for marketing that to the public. And as we all know, the artists' main venue (the main way for artists to make money) is with public performance. If I see someone performing music or dance (or both) and I'm in a position to give them something of value, I give it. If it's a penny or a dollar, it doesn't matter: every little bit helps. I think I've given a twenty to a performing artist before.

But many people don't want performance. They want digitally-enhanced music that they aren't able to play without a license, to the point that if they're playing a car stereo too loudly they can be sued for public performance. Or if another artist has a take on the song, it cannot be performed publicly, because the song is copyrighted. Every time we sing "Happy Birthday," we infringe copyright. Such a standard inhibits our innovation through derivative works. It stifles our cultural pride. It reduces us. It is a direct threat on our freedom of thought and belief, and an attack on the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional duty to promote innovation. True, they are supposed to protect these works, but not at the cost of innovation.

But the most offensive portion of all is that if someone is playing a song too loudly on the stereo (a song, I might add, being broadcast freely by a radio station), then that person is also considered a copyright infringer. The sanctity of the home no longer exists under this new copyright regime. We come up short every time we try to fight it. Well, no more. Groups like the Pirate Party of the United States and the rapidly-growing media piracy movement have had enough. Many of us are also fighting back individually. People like Jammie Thomas are likely going to prove to be the rule and not the exception.

Pirates in history did evil things, like murder, rape, kidnapping, pillaging, plundering, ransoming, and enslaving people. Now pirates do even worse things, like copyright infringement.

Gimme a fucking break.

It's time for a mutiny. But unlike mutinies of the past, where people often got the idea of killing or dumping off the captain of the ship somewhere, this mutiny is one of democracy. And it takes votes. If you're not a registered voter, you're unwittingly working for the likes of the RIAA and the others in the copyright regime. Voter registration isn't hard. It's also not expensive, since a postage stamp is less than half a dollar to mail in a voter registration form to anywhere in the country. State voter registration is where this fight can and will be won. And it's the only way. We can't simply raid the RIAA's headquarters. We're not that kind of pirates.

We're computer geeks. We're artists. We're scholars. We're inventors. We use these things to keep ourselves separate. But in the end, the only thing linking us is the fact that we're sick to death of not being able to maintain the sanctity of our home and the privacy of our communications. If we don't exercise our rights within the law, then we shall find ourselves outlawed. The right of the people to be safe needs to exist again. And unless we hold the threat of removing those in power from those very comfortable and lofty seats, we are powerless to stop them.