They Are the Empty Ones
Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 11:23:59 AM PDT
They are the empty ones: So filled with hatred, fear, and bitterness that their bile overflows, viscous and greasy, coating everything they touch and trailing behind them as they lurch and slump, slug-like, across the earth.
They are the empty ones: Unable to satiate the gnawing hunger of the vast empty place in their soul, with jealous rage they try to fill it with hearts ripped from the breasts of the innocent with their vast engines of hatred and death.
They are the empty ones: Not content in their own misery they spread the word of hatred and fear so that, godlike in their own minds, the whole world will be reborn in their image as they crawl their cancerous emptiness into its every corner.
The Peer to Peer Revolution: Let's Do It!
Tue Apr 04, 2006 at 11:28:53 AM PDT
There is a similar mechanism at work in our economic and political systems - they both rely on a well informed and highly motivated population to run effectively. This is the ultimate check in the system against the power of elites. The greatest imediments to thriving democracy and capitalism alike, are the bottlenecks through which resources flows. To use the media resource as an example, money controls information, information controls choice, and choice controls the levers of economic and political power, and economic and political power control the flow of money. This cycle creates an elite circle of powerbrokers with the ability to manipulate the levers of power. All of this is predicated on their ability to push information down through restricted media venues.
Help! VLWC Is Destroying My Family Conversations...
Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 08:02:14 PM PDT
So I call my Dad on the phone. We rant about the sorry state of world affairs. Something is not right, though. It is as if we are just going through the motions, acting out a play that someone else has already written, directed, and acted in. I call my Brother and the story is the same.
Civil War Strategery: Baghdad Don Rides Again!
Thu Mar 09, 2006 at 11:11:03 AM PDT
March 9, 2006:
"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the -- from a security standpoint -- have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to."
- Donald Rumsfeld
Supporting evidence for Mr. Rumsfeld's claims to follow in extended...
A chance to overturn the SCOTUS ruling prohibiting spending limits
Fri Jun 03, 2005 at 10:45:21 AM PDT
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled, in
Buckley v. Valeo, that certain forms of campaign spending limits were illegal according to first ammendment rights. This equation of money with free speech has made it impossible to create effective restrictions that would limit the influence of the wealthy and their corporate entities on politics.
Today, two current cases in appeals courts have created conflicting precedents on this same issue. That means there is a chance for the Supreme Court to revisit this issue and, possibly, overturn Buckley v. Valeo...
Responsibility and the Cost of War-Would you Fight in Darfur?
Mon May 09, 2005 at 12:26:41 PM PDT
Kos' diary on the 101st Fighting Keyboardists leads me to wonder the opinions of people here are regarding war, responsibility, and moral obligation. In the comments, I suggested that a good litmus test for support of a war would be that nobody should think a war is worth fighting if they are not willing to go and fight it themselves. Asdfasdf responded with a very insightful, difficult, and important question:
"Are you willing to go fight in Darfur to stop the genocide going on there?"
I strongly believe that this is a question that everyone here should answer for themselves, as it goes to the heart of the issue of support for war on the left.
Transformation to a Peer-to-Peer Party and Precinct Level Non-Profit Service Programs
Fri Jan 21, 2005 at 01:50:02 AM PDT
Every once in a while a new way of transmitting and organizing information comes along and creates massive changes in every aspect of society. Advances such as the printing press, telephony, and information theory have had a profound effect on the way we organize and manipulate our economics, politics and technology as well as our social and spiritual lives.
Unless you have been living in a hole for the last 10 years or so you know that it has been repeatedly said that the Internet is going to be the next upheaval, and it will be a massive one. However, as we are still right in the middle of the process the difficult part is trying to divine what these changes will entail and who will benefit (with the corollary of course, of how they will do it). While I agree with this assessment, I believe that people are mistaking the messenger for the message. More specifically than the Internet, it will be the concept of "peer-to-peer" that the internet represents which will be the real driving force for seismic change in the future.
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