Outlook for 2012: Total Collapse of Society and The End of Internet Freedom (video)
The Alex Jones Show
January 2, 2012
On this first live show of 2012, Alex takes a large number of your calls and talks about the latest news, including the Iowa caucus tomorrow and Ron Paul’s chances as the Republican establishment plots against him and pushes the script-reading warmongers Mitt Romney and the recently come-from-behind candidate Rick Santorum, who has proposed air strikes on Iran. Alex also talks about the concerted effort by the corporate media to fiddle with poll results in order to downplay Ron Paul’s obvious lead in the eleventh hour before the caucus. Alex takes a look at the police state NDAA legislation signed into law by Obama, who promises he will not send the military to arrest American citizens and strip them of their rights under the Fourth Amendment.
Why We Must Stop SOPA
End of the American Dream
December 29, 2011
Right now, there are two pieces of legislation in Congress that would change the Internet forever if they are enacted.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) would give the federal government the ability to potentially shut down millions of websites.
SOPA (the version being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives) is the more dangerous of the two. It would essentially be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb being dropped on the Internet.
It would give government officials unlimited power to very rapidly shut down any website that is found to “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. That language is very broad and very vague.
Many fear that it will be used to shut down any websites that even inadvertently link to “infringing material”. Can you imagine a world where there is no more Facebook, Twitter or YouTube?
Sites like those would be forced to hire thousands of Internet censors to make sure that no “infringing material” is posted, and many prominent websites may simply decide that allowing users to post content is no longer profitable and is just not worth the hassle.
Are you starting to get the picture? That is why we must stop SOPA. If SOPA is enacted, it could be the death of the free Internet.
But this is exactly the kind of bill that the establishment media has been waiting for. It would give them back control. SOPA is being heavily promoted by big media corporations.
If they are able to shut down free speech on the Internet, then suddenly everyone would be forced to rely on them for news and entertainment once again.
That is why SOPA and PIPA must be stopped. A recent editorial in the New York Times described how these new laws would work….
The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.
Everyone would be deathly scared of allowing anything to be posted on their websites in such an environment. Free speech on the Internet would be a thing of the past.
An article on lifehacker.com explained how easy it would be to bring a claim against a website under SOPA….
If it’s possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.
Fortunately, some of the biggest names on the Internet are rallying to defeat SOPA. For example, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says that he believes that SOPA will actually “criminalize” links….
“By criminalizing links, what these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet”
Another huge name, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is alarmed that SOPA would give the U.S. government the power to censor search results without even having to go through a court trial….
“Imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress — SOPA and PIPA — give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial)”
In the United States, we used to believe that the government should not take our property away without a fair trial.
But now SOPA would allow the U.S. government to hit Internet websites with a “death penalty” without even having to go to court.
If SOPA becomes law, the Internet will change dramatically.
If there were no websites where people could post thoughts and ideas, what would the world look like?
Over recent months we have seen how sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook can literally change the face of the globe. The following comes from the same New York Times article referenced above….
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have played an important role in political movements from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. At present, social networking services are protected by a “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants Web sites immunity from prosecution as long as they act in good faith to take down infringing content as soon as rights-holders point it out to them. The House bill would destroy that immunity, putting the onus on YouTube to vet videos in advance or risk legal action. It would put Twitter in a similar position to that of its Chinese cousin, Weibo, which reportedly employs around 1,000 people to monitor and censor user content and keep the company in good standing with authorities.
Do we really want Chinese-style Internet censorship in America?
Thankfully, the Internet community is fighting back against SOPA really hard.
Initially, GoDaddy.com was publicly supporting SOPA, but a boycott organized on Reddit has hit them really hard. In fact, GoDaddy lost more than 70,000 domains just last week.
All of this pressure forced GoDaddy to renounce its support for SOPA. However, they are not actively opposing the bill at this point.
Congress is in recess right now, so action on SOPA and PIPA is stalled for now. But the battle is far from over.
And the stakes are incredibly high. One blogger recently put it this way….
“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist”
Yes, the free Internet that we all love and enjoy today is under assault.
If we do not stand up now, we may lose it forever.
Every single day, control of the Internet gets tighter and tighter. For example, did you know that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now watching everything that is said on Facebook and Twitter?
The following comes from a recent Daily Mail article….
The Department of Homeland Security makes fake Twitter and Facebook profiles for the specific purpose of scanning the networks for ‘sensitive’ words – and tracking people who use them.
Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS’s ‘watch’ list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group.
But it is one thing for them to watch the Internet.
It is another thing for them to shut down free speech on the Internet entirely.
Please do what you can to save the open and free Internet.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping to organize users of the Internet to protest this draconian legislation. The following is from a statement that the EFF recently put out….
As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users’ attempts to reach certain websites’ URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.
It gets worse: Under SOPA’s provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a page that makes it very easy to send a letter about SOPA to your representatives in Congress. You can find it right here.
There is also a website called “Stop American Censorship” that has even more ways to let the federal government know that you do not want SOPA to pass. You can find that site right here.
We must stop SOPA. The Internet has made it possible for average people all over the world to communicate with one another on a grand scale, and this is a direct threat to the establishment and the big media corporations that they control.
They are going to try again and again to take back control over the flow of information. We must not allow them to succeed.
Please share this article with as many people as you can, and please do what you can to help defeat SOPA.
—————————–
(hat tip: The Intel Hub)
Grassroots Internet freedom movement slams GoDaddy.com, lawmakers for their support of SOPA
- Dees Illustration
by J. D. Heyes
Natural News
December 28, 2011
(NaturalNews) The Internet is the “final frontier” when it comes to pure freedom of speech and expression, which is why authoritarian regimes in places like Iran and China either severely limit or ban access to much of it.
Having said that, you wouldn’t think that here in the cradle of democracy and freedom, American lawmakers would be attempting to pass legislation that, for all intents and purposes, kills Internet freedom of expression.
Enter the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which is a piece of legislation currently gaining favor in the House of Representatives that would, according to the bill’s language, hold Internet Web hosting companies and their users liable for everything they post.
According to lawmakers supporting the bill, its chief aim is to target foreign Web sites “primarily dedicated to illegal activity” or foreign sites that “market themselves as such.”
“There is a vast virtual market online run by criminals who steal products and profits that rightly belong to American innovators. These foreign rogue websites not only steal movies and music, they offer counterfeit medicine, automobile parts and even baby food, which harm American industries and put American lives at risk,” says Rep. Lamar Alexander, R-Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “Because the U.S. produces the most intellectual property, our nation has the most to lose if we fail to address the problem of rogue sites.”
Sounds fair enough, right? Only, the devil is in the details and, quite frankly, can you remember the last time a piece of legislation came out of Washington, D.C., without a softball-sized spool of string attached to it? Here’s a much more accurate assessment of what the law will really do, from someone who would be affected by its provisions:
SOPA explicitly states that companies will be liable for everything their users post. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, or any sites that allow user generated content CANNOT exist under these laws. Immediately after this bill is passed, you will see the media mafia (MPIAA, RIAA, etc) replacing websites like Wikipedia with commercialized encyclopedia software. Mainstream media outlets will not cover this bill because they are the ones lobbying for it.
CBS News even speculated on the law’s implications: “YouTube videos of your kids dancing to Katy Perry songs could land you in jail, or at the very least, cost you a hefty fine. Sounds like a Big Brother-inspired vision of the future? It’s actually only a few steps away from a reality. If a House committee votes to support the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), you could be committing a felony.”
Lawmakers who support the measure are quick to pooh-pooh such assessments, but Internet sites dedicated to freedom of expression aren’t taking any chances – and they’re voting with their wallets. So much so, in fact, that many have pulled their domains away from GoDaddy.com, one of the Web’s bigger hosting services, because the company initially supported the legislation before announcing it would no longer do so.
The damage caused by that initial support, however, may be irreversible. Scores of companies have already moved thousands of Web sites, including Reddit and Wikipedia. And there’s little evidence to suggest GoDaddy.com will get them back.
It’s a Bizzaro World, indeed, when a premier Web hosting service would ever think to support even a semblance of legislation that sought to criminalize Web hosting firms for something a user/customer posted.
Unless that company was, say, exempt from the legislation?
Sources:
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.co…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-5…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_…
http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/201…
SOPA EQUALS GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP… (video)
YouTube – drinkingwithbob
December 27, 2011
The government wants to regain it’s MONOPOLY ON INFORMATION!!!
MUST WATCH: SOPA Supporters CREATED and Profited from File Sharing, Who Are the REAL Pirates? (video)
Youtube
December 22, 2011
See More EVIDENCE Here: http://onecandleinthedark.blogspot.com/
——————————-
(hat tip: Activist Post)
Money talks: GoDaddy begins to back away from SOPA after boycott
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
December 23, 2011
This is proof that we – as in all Americans that are connected to the internet – can actually have an impact on legislation simply by leveraging our collective buying power, at least to some degree.
After a massive boycott which began Thursday through the social news aggregation website reddit, the domain name registrar GoDaddy has backed down from their open support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Their official press release said that while GoDaddy obviously believes combating online piracy is a major issue, they believe “we can clearly do better,” according to Warren Adelman, GoDaddy’s new CEO.
“It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it,” the statement said.
The case of GoDaddy is quite interesting because they made a 180 degree turn in an astonishingly brief time period.
On Thursday night, GoDaddy emailed a statement to Ars Technica stating, “Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business [sic].”
Clearly their brazen attempts at stifling the internet community’s resolve and thus the boycott did not pan out as they had hoped, as their press release today has proven.
While they won’t explicitly admit it at this point, there was a great deal of high-profile support for the boycott including Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales who said via Twitter, “I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from Godaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us.”
GoDaddy has also said that they are going as far as to remove their past posting which expressed support for SOPA from their website, although Gizmodo revealed that everything is not quite what it seems.
Unfortunately, it appears that declaring victory in this small battle is a bit premature at this stage.
Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle reportedly spoke with GoDaddy’s CEO Warren Adelman, who has only been in the position for a week, about SOPA and their stance on it.
Biddle writes that in fact Adelman isn’t against SOPA, but instead he just believes that SOPA is not “ready in its current form.”
However, Adelman refused to elaborate to Biddle on what exact aspects of the bill he, and thus GoDaddy, took issue with.
Biddle points out that this is quite strange given that Adelman himself admits that GoDaddy helped write the legislation, something that has become far too common in today’s world, in my opinion.
“At a certain point we became involved where we provided commentary and provisions on this legislation that addressed areas that people had concern around,” Adelman said, but when Biddle pressed for Adelman to elucidate which areas GoDaddy helped with, Adelman wouldn’t comment.
Adelman perfectly exemplified my distaste for the corporate role in the democratic process in stating that he believes GoDaddy’s influence is “part and parcel of democracy.”
Biddle closed his Gizmodo article with an incredible line that perfectly sums up the feelings of myself and many others, “Shady domain registration services helping draft legislation that regulates their businesses—The American Way.”
Unfortunately, corporate control over what should be representative government has indeed become the American way.
Instead of joining the ranks of the many internet pioneers who are outright anti-SOPA like Google, Facebook, AOL, etc. they instead appear to be stepping “out of the ring entirely” according to Biddle.
GoDaddy stated that they would be willing to revert to their original position and support SOPA if there was what they called a “consensus” amongst “internet leadership,” while refusing to explain what such a consensus would even look like.
Biddle rightly points out that since giants like Google do not look like they’re going to change their position in the immediate future, it is impossible to imagine “internet leadership” coming to a consensus any time soon.
Interestingly, Biddle wrote, “Adelman refused to go on the record to say GoDaddy is against SOPA,” which makes me think their move might have been purely ceremonial in an attempt to stave off a major boycott.
Given that fact, I think it would be best if those planning on engaging in the boycott do not preemptively plan to stop their actions unless GoDaddy will explicitly state that they are indeed against SOPA.
Biddle reflects this in writing, “it’s safe to say GoDaddy is going to keep its foot in its mouth in a state of PR neutrality and watch the rest of the battle play out, scared into the corner by the threat of lost business and a horrendous reputation.”
The take-away point here is that business can, in fact, be swayed by large-scale, coordinated boycotts and I find it quite reassuring that GoDaddy would back away from supporting SOPA, even if they won’t go as far as to outright oppose it.
It’s also important to note that GoDaddy has openly admitted they took a role in manipulating legislation – something which is far too often denied by corporations and their lobbies – which I think is nothing short of disgusting.
If we continue to boycott GoDaddy and expand the boycotts to even more corporations that are supporting SOPA, I believe that we might in fact be able to put significant economic pressure which could very possibly force them to back down from the draconian internet freedom-crushing bill.
For more information on SOPA, read my previous coverage:
Congress tries to pull a fast one: SOPA markup not delayed until 2012 after all
In less than 24 hours Congress could vote to change the internet forever
Save the internet and boycott these companies
Related posts:
- Angry geeks fire back at SOPA supporters
- Congress tries to pull a fast one: SOPA markup not delayed until 2012 after all
- US courts already enforcing SOPA-style shut-downs
- SOPA is China-style censorship say Google, Twitter, eBay
- Anti-SOPA activists find ways to keep the Internet free
Short URL: http://EndtheLie.com/?p=32274
Gerald Celente: Top 12 Trends 2012
by Gerald Celente
Lew Rockwell
December 22, 2011
Hold onto your hat, your wallet, and your wits.
After a tumultuous 2011 in which many of the trends we had forecast became headline news around the world, we are now forewarning of an even more tumultuous year to come.
While it would give us great pleasure to forecast a 2012 of joy and prosperity – all brought about by the wisdom and benevolence of our fearless leaders – since we are not running for office or looking to profit by gulling the people, we tell it as we see it in our 12 Top Trends 2012.
One megatrend looms on the near horizon. And we forecast that when it strikes, it will be a shock felt around the world. Hyperbole it’s not! Our research has revealed that at the very highest levels of government this megatrend has been seriously discussed. Read on:
1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare economic martial law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.
2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act, granting the President authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”
3. Invasion of the Occtupy: 15 years ago, Gerald Celente predicted in his book Trends 2000 that prolonged protests would hit Wall Street in the early years of the new millennium and would spread nationwide. The “Occtupy” is now upon us, and it is like nothing history has ever witnessed.
4. Climax Time: The financial house of cards is collapsing, and in 2012 many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and geopolitical trends that Celente has accurately forecast will come to a climax. Some will arrive with a big bang and others less dramatically … but no less consequentially. Are you prepared? And what’s next for the world?
5. Technocrat Takeover: “Democracy is Dead; Long Live the Technocrat!” A pair of lightning-quick financial coup d’états in Greece and Italy have installed two unelected figures as head of state. No one yet in the mainstream media is calling this merger of state and corporate powers by its proper name: Fascism, nor are they calling these “technocrats” by their proper name: Bankers! Can a rudderless ship be saved because technocrat is at the helm?
6. Repatriate! Repatriate!: It took a small, but financially and politically powerful group to sell the world on globalization, and it will take a large, committed and coordinated citizens’ movement to “un-sell” it. “Repatriate! Repatriate!” will pit the creative instincts of a multitude of individuals against the repressive monopoly of the multinationals.
7. Secession Obsession: Winds of political change are blowing from Tunisia to Russia and everywhere in between, opening a window of opportunity through which previously unimaginable political options may now be considered: radical decentralization, Internet-based direct democracy, secession, and even the peaceful dissolution of nations, offering the possibility for a new world “disorder.”
8. Safe Havens: As the signs of imminent economic and social collapse become more pronounced, legions of New Millennium survivalists are, or will be, thinking about looking for methods and ways to escape the resulting turmoil. Those “on-trend” have already taken measure to implement Gerald Celente’s 3 G’s: Gold, Guns and a Getaway plan. Where to go? What to do? Top Trends 2012 will guide the way.
9. Big Brother Internet: The coming year will be the beginning of the end of Internet Freedom: A battle between the governments and the people. Governments will propose legislation for a new “authentication technology,” requiring Internet users to present the equivalent of a driver’s license and/or bill of health to navigate cyberspace. For the general population it will represent yet another curtailing of freedom and level of governmental control.
10. Direct vs. Faux Democracy: In every corner of the world, a restive populace has made it clear that it’s disgusted with “politics as usual” and is looking for change. Government, in all its forms – democracy, autocracy, monarchy, socialism, communism – just isn’’t working. The only viable solution is to take the vote out of the hands of party politicians and institute Direct Democracy. If the Swiss can do it, why can’t anyone else?
11. Alternative Energy 2012: Even under the cloud of Fukushima, the harnessing of nuclear power is being reinvigorated by a fuel that is significantly safer than uranium and by the introduction of small, modular, portable reactors that reduce costs and construction time. In addition, there are dozens of projects underway that explore the possibility of creating cleaner, competitively priced liquid fuels distilled from natural sources. Plan to start saying goodbye to conventional liquid fuels!
12. Going Out in Style: In the bleak terrain of 2012 and beyond, “Affordable sophistication” will direct and inspire products, fashion, music, the fine arts and entertainment at all levels. US businesses would be wise to wake up and tap into the dormant desire for old time quality and the America that was.
Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of ’09.”
PN 