Hitler reacts to SOPA

I'm having a hard time concentrating on work today, so instead of simply procrastinating, I've decided to raise some awareness about SOPA and PIPA without getting too technical or boring... and so I present to you Hitler!

You know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the above-mentioned legislation when the voice of reason comes from one of the worst and most brutally violent and despotic tyrants of all time... Say hello to major cognitive dissonance :)

"Don't cry. Disney owns the rights to that emotion" :)

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Stop SOPA and PIPA

Via The Oatmeal

Should copyrighted material be protected? Definitely.

But SOPA and PIPA are not the way to do it. Learn more about it, and then do something about it...

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Police Brutality at UC Davis

Agree or disagree with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, there are a few things that no one can really dispute. For one thing, this is a non-violent grass roots movement intent on raising consciousness about corporate greed and corruption. There may be no unified set of goals or specific demands at the time, and that's fine, it is to be expected from a population that, while unsure about how to proceed, realizes that business as usual is no longer an option.

Second, these protesters are engaging in public, non-violent civil disobedience. As such, while they are sometimes publicly breaking the law (without creating any violence), they are fully prepared to live with the consequences of their actions, and when they get arrested, they offer no violent opposition. In all of this, they are to be commended for living up to the principles of non-violent civil disobedience set down, among others, by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

As you may have heard, a shocking pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis last week has gone viral. Defending the thoughtless and heartless actions taken by two police officers who doused a peaceful crowd with pepper spray, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza argued that the protesters posed an imminent threat to police officers because

"there was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

Well, as you can see in the picture above, a bunch of students sitting down and locking arms in solidarity is not exactly what you would call a "volatile situation," but if you need further context to understand what happened, check it out for yourself:

I think the only plausible solution is to force these assholes to inhale a whole canister of pepper spray and then be dragged in handcuffs to jail...

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Immigrants for Sale

One of the problems with a free market is that when the market is the ultimate decider of values (and doesn't have to answer to anyone), it always decides on the side of profits, regardless of the ethical impact such choices might entail. And when profit is the ultimate goal, even human beings become a mere commodity to be exploited...

Of course, most of us are protected by the Bill of Rights, but undocumented immigrants usually have no knowledge of such rights, are too afraid to demand the respect they deserve as human beings (for fear of being deported, for instance), or have no voice or organization because they are automatically silenced by racist remarks shrouded in the mantra of 'stealing' American jobs (as if any of us would be willing to work that hard for so little pay).

The result, as the following animation shows, is that many immigrants are being recycled through a multi-billion self-perpetuating system of corruption that exploits them, and for which you and I are paying so that a bunch of greedy (and sometimes racists) jerks can profit...

Visit Immigrants for Sale to lend a hand to end this corruption.

And apropos of this entry, today's Calamities of Nature cartoon makes the same point:



Do you know where we really lose American jobs? Outsourcing... but since that's how corporations get to make shitloads of money, it makes sense that they'd want to distract the rest of us with the red herring of illegal immigration... and we are just too eager to take the bait :(

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