It Is Illegal In 22 Cities To Feed The Homeless. WHY?

Thanksgiving has just recently passed, and for many people Thanksgiving isn't just a time for family, friends, and the other typical values, but also a time for volunteering.

Despite this, many city's legislative departments seem stuck on making it near-impossible for volunteer groups to feed and help the less-fortunate, a number which is not going away.

Why would anyone do something like this, though? This statement from the Commissioner in Fort Lauderdale (the most recent city to pass this sort of legislation) might give you an explanation as to why:

“the City of Fort Lauderdale has a substantial interest in the revitalization, preservation of property values and the prevention of the deterioration in its downtown.”

Sigh.

Isn't that the motivation to not letting the number grow in the first place? Their answer to the problem of having enough lower-class, homeless citizens to lower the value of their property, is to make available, provided help for them illegal.

Naturally, the police aren't able to enforce this kind of law when the citizens demand otherwise, and that has become rather apparent. Among the many citizens who have been arrested in defiance of the new law, was 90-year-old volunteer Arnold Abbott. Once the police showed up to his volunteer station, they ordered him to "drop that plate". The man refused, and is now facing up to 60 days in prison and fines of up to $500.00.

This kind of law is short-sighted at best, and when you have 90-year-old volunteers refusing to comply with local police, the illustration shouldn't be far from understandable. I, for one, will gladly voice my opinion against this sort of ignorance.

That's all I have for today, but I'll be back again tomorrow.

"Of all the words of Mice and Men, the saddest are 'It might have been.'" -Kurt Vonnegut

I'll Be Back Monday!

I won't be posting an entry today through Friday because I will be spending time with my friends and family. Thank you, I'll be back next Monday.

Rest in Peace Michael Brown.

If you're anything like me, when you heard the Ferguson verdict yesterday, your heart sank a bit. No matter what stance you take, we should all be able to agree that the unnecessary death of any human being on this earth is something to be mourned over. If you support Ferguson's police department, so be it, and if you support Mike Brown's protesters, so be it, however we should understand that this is not a light event.

If you aren't aware of what exactly the verdict was, the officer who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown was given no indictment for the events that took place.

Considering the protests were turning violent and increasingly anti-police before the verdict, the events that transpired were more than predictable.

As of Time of Writing (~2:30 A.M. CST) there have been over 30 arrests from the police department, and at least 150 gunshots. One police officer was shot but not seriously hurt. Multiple buildings have been set to fire, one from a poorly-made molotov, and the rest by acts of purposeful intention. Tear gas is littering every street corner, and the citizens of the area are absolutely furious.

President Obama released a statement on the matter saying this;

"We need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make," Obama said Monday night. "There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply upset, even angry. It's an understandable reaction. But I join Michael's parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully."

Personally, I've heard several people mock the president's input on the situation. One person complained "The president has bigger problems. Why doesn't he talk about Iran's nuclear program, or North Korea?"

The reason I mention this is to go ahead and dismiss that kind of explanation. The president has a large civil uprising in his country, and if there was one thing he should give his input on, it's this.

As of 2:30 A.M. CST, protesters were completely surrounding the police station throwing things, and shouting hate speech at the local police.

All of this was expected, and as a citizen it is nice to see other citizens stand up for their beliefs, however, as a person, it breaks my heart to see that it became so violent and hateful.

I do believe it is our job as individuals to fight for each other, and do what is necessary to demand our rights. However, violence is never the correct answer, I'm afraid. Sometimes it may be the easiest one, but it will never be the right one. It is hard to forgive each other and take the time to make change. It is hard to have trust in each other. However, it is also peaceful, and that is always preferable.

Every time a child, like Mike Brown, dies there is a mother who cries for them. People never forget these sort of things throughout their lifetime, and it his hard to accept. However, we as a people must look at ourselves and ask if burning down KFCs is the answer.

I support every member of this group and hope only the best in their protests. But I also hope, more than anything else, that we can find it in ourselves to not take this anger and hatefulness out on each other, but on the ideas of militarization, and brutality, and corruption.

That's all I have for today, I'll be back tomorrow with another post.

"I think the men who play with toys taken over, and if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we are fools." -Ray Bradbury

Eminem "Threatens To Rape Iggy Azalea", And Now What?

Before I start, this week my posts will be slightly shorter than before, only do to the fact that I am out of school until next Monday and will be spending the majority of the time with my family. Regardless, I will still be releasing posts daily and will go back to normal next Monday. (I will be taking off entirely for Thanksgiving, however.)

The rap artist Eminem has never been known for his public restraint and politically correct mouth. There's an unspoken contract that we, the public, not ask him to be and in turn he makes 13-Grammy-wins deserving music. In the past he has called out several female artists and public figures for various reasons including; Christina Aguilera, Norah Jones, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Rihanna, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Alba, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Pamela Anderson, and Lana Del Ray.

Eminem will be releasing his newest album (Shady XV), and just recently there was some content leaked off the album. This was the line from his song named "Vegas"

"So, what’s it gon’ be?
Put that shit away, Iggy
You gon’ blow that rape whistle on me ... scream!"

 "Rapper" Iggy Azalea  fired back on Twitter saying:

"Im bored of the old men threatening young women as entertainment trend and much more interested in the young women getting $ trend. zzzz"

The reason I chose to talk about this is because I think there is a real message that we need to pull from the drama-loaded nonsense. As always, women are angry at Eminem and giving him all sorts of hell in the name of anti-massaginism.

Not that anyone is pro-rape, because that's not a truly existent viewpoint, I do have a problem with this sort of harsh backlash to Eminem's music. Surface level, I am sure that sounds hateful of me, but let me explain.

Eminem is an entertainer, who's sole job is to use his talent to make other people's lives more enjoyable. Also, his songs are generally, with the exceptions that be, are suppose to be taken comedically. Eminem doesn't want to rape Iggy Azalea but he is rapping music that will make his fans giggle and rap along.

That's not pro-rape, that's not hateful, it's just entertainment. The idea proposed, that we should censor entertainment in any case, seems ridiculous to me. He isn't promoting rape, he is just rapping for the enjoyment of his fans.

The fact that it is nothing more than that, is the reason that I cannot bring myself to be angry about this sort of thing, is that the entertainment industry, despite all of it's many qwerks, makes people happy and has no further purpose than that.

In other words, although rape is clearly wrong, Eminem is a rapper. Don't take his words as anything more than someone trying to get a small laugh out of the people who idolize him.

That's all for today, but I'll be back again tomorrow with a new post.

"Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you've got your back turner." -Eminem

Mexico Is Dying And You Should Care

The country of Mexico has not, at least in my lifetime, ever been considered to be the safest or most luxurious country on earth. It's rather notorious, in fact, for its political corruption and domestic warfare. There is now a path to change and much needed revolution for the struggling country.

However, the conflict is rather complicated and hard to follow, so I'll do my best to simplify the events down (without distorting the information) and break it down in a less complicated way. Once I'm done, I will leave extra article links below if you would like to read further on the matter.

How it has all started:
On September 26th, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of Iguala's Mayor José Luis Abarca, of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, was in the town's main square giving a speech about her political and social accomplishments in the office of Head of Municipal Social Services Agency. It was being rumored that she would announce her candidacy to take over her husband's office as mayor in June elections.

However, just as she began her speech, two busloads of kids from the notoriously radical teachers' college in the nearby city of Ayotzinapa arrived to raise money and began heading for Iguala's town square.

According to the Federal Attorney General's Office, she ordered the local police chief to stop them from coming to the square. After a minor clash with the local police, the students stole three buses (that they would also use to go to the march commemorating the 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco), but on their way out of the city were sprayed with machine gun fire by the local police and members of the United Warriors cartel.

During the shooting, three students died, along with a soccer player, a cab driver, and his passenger.

Apparently, one student who panicked and left when his classmates were rounded up by police and gang members was later found dead with his eyes gouged out and face flensed with a box cutter, in an act of unspeakable, and not to mention unnecessary, violence. 43 other students were huddled up into police cars, and have now disappeared. (Remains of human bodies found burned and remains thrown down a river found recently are speculated to be from the students, but as of the writing of this entry is still unconfirmed.)

María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa has been, for years now, working with Beltrán Leyva, Sinaloa and Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors, mentioned above) cartels and a recently captured leader of the United Warriors stated she was the "key operator" of criminal activity around the town of Iguala.

"The classmate was bleeding so much," the 19-year-old de la Cruz told Reuters at the all-male college in Ayotzinapa, east of Guerrero's capital Chilpancingo. "He wrote on his mobile phone: 'Get me out because I'm dying'. Because he wasn't able to talk. We saw them take them. It just means that we have a narco government in Guerrero."*

Hundreds of students briefly occupied the state attorney general's office in Guerrero on Tuesday in protest and a local far-left guerrilla group known as the EPR (The Popular Revolutionary Army) issued a statement pledging to resist what it labeled "state terrorism".

What we are left with:
Since the incidents have occurred, there have been mass demonstrations against the government. President Peña Nieto ran his campaign (pre-2010) on ending the murderous gang-related violence and corruption of Mexico. Although the murder rate did decrease, kidnapping and torture rates went up, and citizens say that police involvement in crime is worse than ever. Corruption has spread, but they are scared to say it aloud.

"We all tried to march in a smart, civil way; let the government know we are not happy with how they are performing and that we want the resignation of our president. As usual in mexico the peaceful marches didn't last long, for some guys payed by the government infiltrated the marches and rioted in violent ways." -/u/stevenette

Today is the anniversary of Mexico's revolution and masses will take this opportunity to take to the streets and demand the resignation of President Nieto. I do not doubt that violence will ensure, and my thoughts and love go out to all those who are affected, in any way, by these events.

However, this is Mexico's chance to make the change they so desperately need. A country with such astounding culture and solid ideals have no need for such violence and hatred, and I can only hope that they make the most of what they have got. The road ahead of these people is a long and merciless one. I stand with the people of Mexico.

That is all I have for today, and I will leave the links to further articles below. I'll be back Monday with a new post. Thank you!

"Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery- have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience." -Howard Zimm


*Quote pulled from Dave Graham's article on Reuters
Huffington Post
Reuters

4,000,000 New Americans. Now What?

Today, in America, President Barack Obama will use executive action in order to progress immediate immigration reform.

This act will shield the parents of 4,000,000 "Dreamers" living in the United States. Dreamers are mass groups of teenagers and young adults, who are legal citizens to the United States. However, their parents were illegal immigrants out of Mexico or Central America.

This act from the President has got some extremely harsh backlash for instituting this new order, and it isn't surprising.

See, there is a dying need for immediate immigration reform, and that has been more and more apparent to the American public recently.

However, it is also notable that the President is likely stepping out of his legal boundaries by passing an Executive Order that fabricates an entirely new law.

We have arrived at a political crossroads, where both sides are wrong, and both paths lead straight to destruction, but we still have to pick one. And we have decided to base our decision off what lines the pockets of politics more.

So this is something I cannot find an immediate answer for. Although the president has taken a controversial approach, we cannot ignore these people's cries for help.

So I ask that you find it in you to determine your own answer. You see, we must be a nation of educated people. We must be thinkers, and philosophers. We must understand, and not blindly follow, or else we're wasting our breaths.

That's all I have for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with a new post.

"Those who are heartless once cared too much." -Unknown

Fighting In The Streets of Greece

41 years ago yesterday, the militaristic dictatorship of Greece was toppled by the students of a distraught and crippled nation.

So, on the 41st anniversary, protesters took to the streets demonstrating anti-police-state opinion.

There was an undeniable amount of anti-Americanism going on throughout the protests (which primarily took place outside the U.S. Embassy), including, but not limited to, the burning of American flags.

The reason for this anti-American attitude that has been thrown around is due to the fact that in the year 1973 when the revolts take place, the military junta that was in power was heavily United States backed.

So, now the Greeks took to the streets, not only in remembrance of their painstaking fight against the tyranny of an oppressive regime, but have an additional goal. That goal is to end the militarization of their police force, in fear of a familiar tone being forced back onto the shoulders of their oncoming generations.

Around 8:30 PM, a group of young protesters attacked a squadron of riot police, which lead to the firing of tear gas, more aggressive tactics, and street searchings which only furthered civilian aggravation with the police force.

I must say, speaking from person observations, it amazes me how modern governments repetitively call their citizens free, and they insist that they run by the people's voice. However, when the citizens call for change, and when the people demand progression, suddenly it's all about the government knowing best.

You see, we as a people have come to form this very romantic, very ideological view of how we live, and how we govern ourselves. We love this romanticized view of reality so much, that we prefer it over what truly exists.

That's not abnormal, it gives birth to beautiful art and wonderful creations from humanity. However, we cannot sit back and pretend, using that idealization, that we are somehow not in any danger of having our freedoms stripped.

Living in freedom will be a constant anxiety-paranoia-driven nightmare, and that's the price we pay. However, we must also accept that if we want to keep being free we must use that anxiety to spawn the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

So I support these freedom fighters, and I hope they keep fighting until they get what they are demanding, because that is what true freedom is.

That's all I've got for today, but I'll be back again tomorrow with another post.

"She was beautiful. But she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful. Something to be admired from a distance, but not up close." -Unknown

No, We Invade People Too.

"The United States," President Obama said, was "very firm on the need to uphold core international principles, and one of those principles is that you don't invade other countries."

Wow... Is this real life? Am I dreaming?

Did Charles Manson just tell the American public that it's wrong to kill people?

The United States invaded Iraq on pretenses of chemical weapons that didn't actually exist. The United States has been at war for 214 of it's 238 year existence. We have bombed innocent people, killed in the name of injustice, and laughed at the pain of others.

Now, we scorn Russia and put ourselves above them for doing the same thing that we've done for hundreds of years.

Does anyone operate on something but pure ignorance when running government anymore? Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine, and yes, the United States invaded Iraq, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya in the past 20 years (Not including airstrikes in Sudan and covert operations in Pakistan and within Mali.). But can't we all just be friends...?

I suppose not.

The thing is, the President, as well as his predecessors, no doubt see the invasions by the United States as necessary evil, not as the blunt, no-excuse invasions they really were.

We must understand, despite what we've been taught growing up, that America is not different than any other country on this planet. We are not the greatest country in the world, no matter what it is what we have been told. The only greatest thing we have is that our military spending is higher than the next 8 countries combined.

That's not a good thing either.

You cannot prepare for peace while simultaneously preparing for war. That's not the way humanity works. If you have the world's most powerful military at your fingertips, someone's fingers will get itchy.

So don't believe that we are above these people, or somehow different, because we are us and they are them. Our crimes are just as dispicable, Mister President. And you'd be smart not to forget it.

That's all I have for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with another post.

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." -Ernest Hemmingway

Anonymous Seizes the KKK's Twitter, Why Should You Care?

The hacker collective Anonymous is widely known for it's anti-political-correctness and extremely bold strategies for fighting it's battles. These battles include taking down internet pedophiles on the DarkNet, restoring internet and full coverage of the Egyptian revolution to the outside world, and now fighting for the protesters of Ferguson.

There has been a lot of heavy scrutiny toward the Ferguson protesters and their cause. The protests started after the late Michael Brown was shot by Ferguson police. However, the controversy became more and more nationally debated once Ferguson police rolled out for the protests in military-grade police vehicles, holding assault rifles, while wearing combat military armor.

This kind of police militarization is, quite notoriously, one of the largest dangers to the American public's freedom to protest, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of information.

So, most large groups and social influenced formed their own opinions on the matter, and were very public about the conflict. Whether or not they agreed on the original Mike Brown controversy, the mass of people's opinions went against the militarization of the police departments.

However, one group in particular has voiced it's own exceptionally strong opinion about the protests and the following debates. The Ku Klux Klan, about 75 miles south of Ferguson, started handing flyers around threatening to use "lethal force" against the protesters. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the actual sect that started the threats (Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan) is listed as an active hate group.

Anonymous, following the threats, launched it's own operation against the Ku Klux Klan, seizing two of the groups twitter accounts, d0xing the group's head members, and attacking the group's servers through multiple strings of Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

The Anonymous collective released this statement (in video, but I'll just leave the text here).

"KKK it has came to our unfortunate attention that you have been interfering with Anonymous. 

We are not attacking you because of what you believe in as we fight for freedom of speech… 

We are attacking you because of what you did to our brothers and sisters at the Ferguson protest on the 12th of November. 

Due to your actions we have started Operation KKK. 

The aim of our operation is nothing more than Cyber Warfare. 

Anything you upload will be taken down, anything you use to promote the KKK will be shut down. 

DDos attacks have already been sent and have infiltrated your servers over the past 2 days… d0x's have also been launched on leaders of the KKK. All information retrieved will be given to the public. 

You messed with our family and now we will mess with yours…
Let the cyber war begin.
We are legion.
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Ku Klux Klan you should have expected us."

This is one of the hacked accounts:

And this is the picture that was posted shown in the screenshot:

Who will come out on top, who will win the PR battle, and who will get arrested I cannot say. All I can say, is that my opinions fall on the side of Anonymous. The fact is, that protests are a crucial part of America societal progression. Without it, we are no different than any dictatorship out there.

The Ku Klux Klan is doing their own protesting but purely in the name of anti-protesting, and invoking a violent outreach in the meantime. That's volatile at best, and is the kind of close minded belief that leads to the destruction of Americans' freedom, which I will not stand for at any point.

If you put safety over freedom, then I'm sorry, but that's not what this country was founded on. You can the argument that any government ideology belongs in a state that calls itself free, and I will agree with you. However, moving toward a government where the people don't have that freedom, for the sake of safety, is unacceptable.

We must accept that this is not a place for overwhelming safety at the cost of freedom. America is not a country of hand-outs and will never be. If you want opportunity, and freedom, it will not be handed to you. For whatever reason (because we've never had to fight for it), this generation feels entitled to the freedom they have and in turn all they have to do is cheer on Veteran's Day.

That's not the case. We will spend our entire lives fighting, and we must accept that. That's the only way we will keep what we were given, and improve on it.

That's all I have for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with another entry.

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but not what to see." -Alexandra K. Tenfor

Casey Wardynski, This One Is For You

With teachers being underpaid, schools in need of renovations, and the entire system in bad need of a full scale reform, there's no doubt that money is a tight resource and must be carefully budgeted. 

There are important matters to be handled, and the system should be transparent, of course. Despite whether or not you believe in federal transparency, there's no doubt that a small-scale, public education system has no need to be making monetary deals behind closed doors.

At least that's what it would look like to any educated, or not-paranoid citizen, but not Casey Wardynski.

You see, Casey Wardynski has spent over $150,000.00 on spying on children's Facebook account.

That is a lot of money, and could have been put to any number of important projects, like renovations, or teacher's salaries, or serving food that isn't primarily Class-D meat to the children in your district. Instead he used it to expel children from school on pretenses that these kids should sue over.

Not only that, but he has waltzed around with statements about how this program he has been using, so called "SAFe", has expelled over a dozen children. (Uhm... Yay?) Does he understand that his job is to progress learning, not halt it, and in every situation possible throw out the bad eggs?

Apparently, the Superintendent things he's still in the military fighting enemies of the states and mass-surveillance is a necessary step.

Well, let me go ahead and send out a message to Mr. Wardynski:

Dear Casey Wardynski,

You are not the National Surveillance Agency, you are a superintendent of a school system in Huntsville, Alabama. You have no over-arching power, and your job is to ensure the education of children. It is an important job, and you are currently failing it.

You have spent immense amounts of money on tests to prove how intelligent your students are, and receive more funding. Test more, keep testing, test until the kid's brains are melted onto the desk and are begging for legitimate education.

Education is the most important value to our society, and we should all know this by now. The Next Generation is the most powerful weapon that can ever be wielded. However, Papa Bear, this weapon is not for your hands. They must decide their own way to walk and the decisions that they believe will help make progress, because so far you have failed to do that.

Education is not, not, not memorizing facts and meaningless data, retaking tests over and over to learn their strategy and perfect it to line your pockets, or sit in the back of a classroom, make A's, but intake no true lessons. Education is about learning how to think, how to exist, deciding your own route, taking in the lessons of those before us, and then putting it into action.

You've hammered into children's minds that they are worthless because they are beautiful dolphins that can't climb trees as well as monkeys can. And you are wrong.

So, superintendent, learn your priorities. Spying is not your job, organizing true teaching is your job. Although you made it rudely clear that you believe you somehow are the voice of the people, just remember that you're not.

You had better learn to be, and learn soon, or your job won't be so assured once the kids in HCS's system come back as voters, activists, and the new power.

Sincerely, someone who actually cares about education.

That's all I have for today, but I'll be back again Monday!

"Forcing academics to pay to read the works of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those in elite universities in the First World, but not to the children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable." -Aaron Swartz

Boots On The Ground

With Veteran's Day come and gone, there is an undeniable, and minorly over-dramaticized state of patriotism throughout the union.

We spend Veteran's Day thinking of the soldiers who have died in war fighting on the side of America. We make them heroes, and we honor them in every way we, as a country, can do. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

You see, America currently spends more than any other country in the world on it's military than the next 8 countries do combined.

We throw our troops into battle for any reason that we see fit, and have tricked our citizens that we do it all in the name of global democracy, when it's more commonly in economic benefit for America.

We thank the troops, but are quick to destroy any veteran's benefits bills if it calls for any personal sacrifice from the American people, or goes against any partisan belief. They won't reform the Veteran's Affairs, and they lie to us about our wars.

So if we really care about our veteran's, a good way to show it is by not making more.

America has recently sent an additional 1500 ground troops into the Middle East to combat ISIL, which as of the moment hasn't seemed entirely necessary considering the previously agreed-upon bombing campaign by multiple countries.

So, do I support our troops? Yes, I do. It is the men that are sending them into battle on false pretenses, lying to them, and refusing to help them I do not support.

You do not have to support a battle to support the people who fought it. I do not support high-militarism, I do not support corporate and political deceit, and I do not support the terrorizing of innocent people in the benefit of a better economy.

That's all I have for you today, I'll be back tomorrow with another post!

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state become the people." -Admiral William Adams

It's Time To Make Some Real Change.

I have often said that I do not support Republicans, and I do not support Democrats, that is because I do not support politicians in general.

I do, in all truth, believe that our Congress has become unsustainably corrupted. With the influence of corporations to provide campaign funds to a candidate, which leads to the inevitable siding of these candidates toward the sides of these corporations, has become a deciding factor in modern government.

And before it's brought up, no I do not think it is a good idea for billion dollar companies to influence politics in any way what-so-ever. I thought we lived in a democracy, not an oligarchy. I cannot even imagine why this is a legitimate debate.

Also, we have the largest library in the world, if you weren't aware. It is called The Library of Congress, but socially, historically, philosophically, and educationally speaking we have one of the most ignorant legislative bodies in the world.

They are no longer the voice of the American people, there aren't many politicians that are. They pass laws that we don't ask for, and they call it freedom. There is no right minded citizen in favor of the destruction of net neutrality, however just recently there was a big push for that against the will of U.S. citizens.

So we live in a state by the people, for the people, but it isn't run by the people, and definitely not for the people... So what is it?

If at the will of corporations government can decide that they're going to go against the will of the public, then what freedom is it that the American people actually have?

However, things don't change, because not only is the American Congress uninformed, a large majority of the American people are also uninformed.

Congress has an 11% approval rating, but has a 96.4% re-approval rating. The American people are not preparing, ready, or worried about changing.

I would like to suggest to all those who read this, that in order to fix a problem, we must first accept that we have one.

I think it's time we make this king of change.

That's all I have for today, but I'm also going to leave a copy of the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto below for all those to read. If you aren't aware of what this is it is an open-source letter Aaron Swartz wrote on the subject of the freedom of information.

I'll be back with a new post tomorrow.

"I encourage people to remember that 'No' is a complete sentence." -Gavin deBacker

"Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal —
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world
is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by
the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate
require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who
can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public
culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open
Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the
privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Aaron Swartz

July 2008, Eremo, Italy"

Happy Veterans Day

Today's post will be short, for it is Veteran's Day, and is a time to celebrate and honor the military of the United States.

I would simply like to remind you that, although today is a day of patriotism, there should always be a moment where we are no longer scared to be unpatriotic.

This country, and this government, no matter what we try and say or do about it, is not permanent. All empires must eventually fall.

So we just understand that we are not God's gift to this Earth. We have committed crimes against the world, and we have sinned, but that's not what decides our history and our fate as a nation.

We must fight for what comes next, and make it better.

So simply remember to not take too friendly to the idea that we should always back up the government and let them tell us what to believe, because that is not the society we are supposed to raise. My only hope is that we can make this world better than it was when we got here, for the generations that come after us.

Happy Veterans Day.

"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." -Oscar Wilde

The Internet's Own Boy: Aaron Swartz.

They called him the Internet's Own Boy. There's no mystery as to why that was, either. For those who heard him speak, and listened to what he stood for, he was the embodiment of this generation's voice.

Today I'm going to tell the story of the late Aaron Swartz, how he fought for the freedoms of each person in America, and how we shunned him and left him to be outcast anyways.

Aaron came from a family of three brothers who were all notoriously and exceedingly bright for kids their age, and Aaron in particular, as his brother said, "learned how to learn at a very young age. He loved learning, and teaching, and reading.

He was a prodigy.

His parents introduced him to computers at the age of 2 and he fell in love with computers and the internet. He saw programming as a way to make things that otherwise couldn't exist.

At the age of twelve he created the theinfo.org where anyone could edit information that they thought was important or wrong, and could correct it.

He believed in high school that public education was a joke, and he started reading educational alternatives and origins. Aaron said that's what led him down a path of questioning; questioning his education system, questioning the facts they were regurgitating, and the government that built the system.

As a 15 year old, he helped write the creative commons (sort of a 'Some Rights Reserved' system) code for the Supreme Court Copyright case. Adults saw him as an adult.

He was a kid who wanted desperately to make the world a better place.

He went to Stanford but was not at home there. Odds are Swartz felt out of place at the time, however. He wanted to learn, he wanted to make people happy, but he was locked in a place of over-grown high schoolers and future 1%-ers.

So after a year he left and became a part of a Y-Combinator site, which would eventually merge with another Y-Combinator start-up site called Reddit.

He became more and more philosophical with his views. He said "It's no longer who has a voice, because everyone can have a voice now."

Aaron was miserable in an office space and stopped coming to work. He said on his first day at Wired, by lunch time he locked himself in the bathroom and cried. Eventually, he got himself purposefully fired, and it was a nasty break-up between Aaron and Alexis Ohanian and the reddit crew.

"I think you should always be questioning. I take this very scientific attitude. That everything you've been taught is up for questioning."

Swartz threw all his energy into a new set of public projects, such as OpenLibrary.org. He grew to believe more and more that corporations were being greedy with information.

Aaron Swartz fought for public access to the public domain. Seems like common sense, right? No, Americans will be fought day and night for public record. The government website PACER made public domain 10 cents a page, and was in fact illegal to do by the government.

So the Thumbdrive Corp became people who would take these public files and upload them to a third-party website.

Someone gave Swartz a copy of code that downloaded mass amounts of these Public Access documents at a time (the government had set up 22 libraries in the U.S. where PACER documents were free as a sort of compromise), and within a few hours Swartz had started uploading over 700 Gigabytes of these documents to this third-party site, that totaled out to about 20 million pages.

The FBI tried to come after Swartz and his family, and camped out around his house. So, the FBI was investigating someone making public documents that explain the law, on the grounds he may be committing a crime. Somehow.

He fought corporations who locked up papers and put a price on them. It enraged Swartz that there was human knowledge out there that only the likes of Google was allowed to have.

He ended up hacking into JSTOR's database in the MIT technical building as Gary Host. This registered the computer into the system as GHost_Laptop. Instead of using WiFi to access the database, he broke into an MIT closet and plugged his laptop directly in.

However, the authorities found his laptop and hard drive plugged directly into MIT's database, and instead of unplugging it installed a surveillance camera. Days later, they found Swartz while he was replacing a hard drive.

All of Aaron Swartz's areas including his apartment and Harvard office were searched by police, and a court case was given over to Stephen Heymann.

Swartz's arrest ate away at him, and he was constantly stressed and a nervous wreck.

Suddenly unprecedented amounts of activism took place. Time Magazine named Person of the Year "The Protester". Wikileaks was releasing unknown amounts of government files, Anonymous was getting it's feet off the ground, LulzSec was taking down the FEMA, UN's, and NATO's websites.

The U.S. government gave him a deal that if he spent 6 months in jail, a year on house arrest, and time in a half-way house, along with pleading a convicted felon, and they'd drop their case. 

Swartz wasn't a murderer, he wasn't trafficking drugs, he wanted to teach people for free. That's all he cared about. They wanted to take away his right to vote, his right to office, and make him spend time in jail.

On July 14th, 2011 Aaron Swartz was indited for four felonies, they strip searched him, and left him in solitary confinement. He faced up to 35 years in prison and fines of up to 1,000,000 dollars. 

JSTOR immediately dropped all prosecutions against Swartz, and that it was the U.S. government who wanted to prosecute. The U.S. government said they wanted to make an example of Aaron Swartz, however, and still refused to drop the case.

MIT refuses to defend Aaron, and that infuriates the culture and students of MIT. Hacking was encouraged by MIT, that was their culture that they had created, but now they wouldn't defend it. They turned their back on their own kind.

Swartz founded Demand Progress against the SOPA bill. SOPA was a bill that was designed to get rid of online piracy, however, it was taking a sledgehammer to a problem that needed a scalpel.

SOPA got a long way without any expert getting involved, because Congress didn't want experts. They said they needed to "bring in the nerds".

Finally, the white house released a statement said that they did not support the bill.

Within 24 hours, all the major websites went black. The blacked out in defiance of SOPA; Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and anyone who was anyone on the internet. The internet had finally grown up and shown it's power. This was an extremely important moment for the people.

Aaron Swartz's prosecution was designed to be a message. It was a message to anyone like Swartz (Barrett Brown, any member of LulzSec, Anonymous) to let them know, to tell any informationalists, pro-democracy fighters, and the rebels,  'We know that you have the power, we know you're the opposition, and we know you can trouble the establishment. But don't.' This was the moment where the subculture became the power.

Aaron rejected their final plea deal and a trial date was set. The entire matter was weighing too heavily on this barely-a-man's shoulders. Keep in mind, all this had happened before Aaron Swartz had turned 26 years old. He became depressed, he became anxious, and he was scared.

It was too much for this man-of-a-boy. At 26 years old Aaron Swartz committed suicide in his Brooklyn Apartment. We lost one of the best and most creative minds of our generation.

Aaron Swartz had so much more to do with his life, and no matter who you were at the time, you lost a child.

The internet exploded.

He was the Internet's Own Boy, and it was his fight that killed him. Despite whether it was a gun wound to the head, he died fighting his battle. The outdated law that was accountable for most of Aaron's charges was reformed, and renamed "Aaron's Law".

Weeks later, a 14 year old kid with access to JSTOR files, while looks through them found a new way to detect Pancreatic Cancer. Normally, Pancreatic Cancer  is already too late to stop before it kills you. It's because of this database and this knowledge that Aaron fought for that progress is being made, and lives are saved.

Aaron Swartz was not a criminal.

We are ruled by criminals.

Aaron Swartz was a hero.

So, yes I support Aaron Swartz. I support Edward Snowden. I support Bradley Manning. These are the people that are doing good. These are the people that are trying to make a true difference, and to make this hell of a world a better place.

Not Republicans. Not Democrats. They don't care about you, they don't want to help. Politics is all about money. These fighters want to help. That is why I support the Freedom of Information.

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it to themselves." -Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)

I Don't Care About Politics. I Care About People.

So if you have paid attention to any politics, odds are that you know that the GOP (Grand Ole' Party, or the Republican Party) has now taken control of both the House of Representatives and and the Senate.

Boehner had this to say in his press conference on Thursday;

“The fact is my job is listen to my members and listen to the American people,”

Here's the thing about that Papa Bear, a record high of 42% of Americans identified as Independent as of 2013 and Republican identification fell to 25%.

I wouldn't be so quick to say you're the voice of America if you're putting every effort of your territory to suing the president and rolling back a health care bill, when 75% of America cannot bring themselves to identify to your policies.

Not that I have anything against Boehner and his crew, but I am pro-progress to the highest degree, and Conservatism, by definition, is ideally anti-progress (very simplified of course. Never take my word as law, you should always do your own research.).

Also, I genuinely disagree with many of the affairs that both sides of congress are taking part in, such as the mass-funding of politicians by corporations. Neither primary party is innocent of this, but the concept is a Republican supported ideology.

What's wrong with corporations giving money to politicians? Well, let's look at it this way. As of now, there are many strong opinions being thrown around about the censorship of Internet and information due to cable companies desire to change the way Americans' receive their Internet.

Now, let's say AT&T provides massive amounts of money to the campaigns of half the politicians involved in the voting of bills related to this very pressing issue? Suddenly, we don't live in a democracy, we live in an oligarchy.

That's not what was set up for us over 200 years ago.

So, the Republicans want to show that they can take this country in a positive direction, then I will give them an absolute fair chance to do so. Do I have confidence in the next 2 years of partisan, super-one-sided rule? No.

They have already made it clear their first priority is going to be the roll-back of Obamacare. Do I think Obamacare is a good system? Not quite, no. However, I do believe there are many more pressing issues for Congress to handle than this bill.

How about the IRS scandal that affected your supporter's tax-cuts? The IRS claimed the six involved hard drives "crashed". However, you can still retrieve data from crashed hard drives, so that's okay! No, because afterward they burned the hard drives. They destroyed them.

Just to be clear, you have better odds to win the Florida lottery 342 times consecutively than all six of those hard drives crashing within the month the IRS was under investigation.

There's no transparency, too much censorship, people are living in poverty, and while you keep the rich people happy and the poor angry, you insist you speak on behalf of America? No.

If you want to be respected as a party, or any authority figure what-so-ever deal with the real problems at hand, not a revenge rollback on a bill you didn't want to pass when you were out of power.

If you say the system is broken, you're wrong. The system's not broken.

It was made this way. It's our job as Americans to fix it.

That's all I've got for today, but I'll be back Monday with another post.

"If you're really success at bullshitting, it means you're not hanging around enough people smarter than you." -Neil deGrasse Tyson