OSDev.org

http://www.guerrillanews.com/sci-tech/doc953.html

All US citizens, listen up!!! There is a new sherriff coming to town who will have the power to turn off your internet access if you are a dissident. His name is George W. Bush. I do not want this measure being passed with the same kind of anonymity as the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and (barely) the Department of Total Information Awareness (headed up by the felon Poindexter).

Please, this is not a troll! Take this very seriously. Tell your friends and parents before it gets passed. Write your Congressman. Whatever! Just let people know about this before it can be passed. We are the people and we run this country.

Non-USians, I want y'all to know that a lot of us here in the US are getting awfully worried about what is going on over here.

Andrew_Baker wrote: Non-USians, I want y'all to know that a lot of us here in the US are getting awfully worried about what is going on over here.

It would be really weird if you didn't. This's against what America was founded on. Bush seems to be denying the US roots, which's one of the biggest crimes a US leader can commit. Guess it shouldn't take long before an anti-Bush organisation is made in the US by 'mericans ;D (Then I would laugh my @$$ off ^-^ )
Anyways, that sucks >:(

-Kon-Tiki-

Shut off the internet??? What's he gonna do? Go clipping telephone wires? Shut down all American servers? There's gotta be millions of them. I bet he'll shut off AOL only because he thinks that all Americans are subscribed and only Americans at that. The moron might want to avoid an information blackout rather than generating one. There's still radio and newspapers...but I know some people who would panic if they couldn't access tv for information and wouldn't think for a moment to buy themselves a newspaper or turn on the radio.

I can just imagine it next, Bush shutting off all electricity because he can't control illegal use of it whatever that might be. Next thing you know, your neighbors or holding you at gunpoint with colt 45s and robbing you of all your wax candles and propane supplies.

No, actually, the real targets would be smaller ISP's because they are more easily pressured. Remember that AOL has investments in Washington. He won't be "shutting off the Internet", he'll just be blacking out dissidents. Communication = Community, after all. The big companies like AOL and Verizon could afford to block out some suspect customers, but smaller, local ISP's cannot.

And if you think this is a joke, look to China, where not only is all Internet content filtered, but people have gone to jail for accessing or publishing politically volatile websites.

And if you think this is a joke, look to China, where not only is all Internet content filtered, but people have gone to jail for accessing or publishing politically volatile websites.

Really? Where did you get that?

Really? Where did you get that?

It was in the news about a month or so ago. The Chinese government has banned the use of the Google search engine on all computers in China as a show of force. The reason being that people were searching for information on "forbidden" subjects, such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement which has been the subject of severe repression in recent years.


Bush has been a dismal failure since he became President.. many of the foundations of American society have become shaky.

The economy tanked with the Nasdaq stock market losing 2/3 of its value

The Enron accounting scandals shook confidence that our corporations are honest and not "cooking the books" -- which Bush has still not made public a desire to pass a comprehensive new law to ensure the impartiality of accounting firms

September 11th shook the confidence in our government to protect us in the case of a national emergency (Bush f*cked up, plain and simple).

The recent Catholic priest scandals in which priests guilty of molesting young boys have been reassigned instead of removed from the church has left many people questioning their faith. Bush has not made any public effort to help people feel more secure in this regard, leaving the matter to the Church despite the fact that millions of people are affected

Promoting this insane war with Iraq when Afghanistan is still far from being a stable country. It remains in many places a haven for extremists.

There STILL has not been an independent investigation into the events preceding 9/11 one and a half years later. Instead, Homeland Security will soon be a reality, and the government will begin investigating the general populace on an unprecedented level.

Foreign relations have dropped dramatically. Numerous treaties have been broken (Kyoto, and a planned missile defense system is in violation of a 1970s-era treaty with Russia), and worst of all, the international goodwill that existed immediately after 9/11 has been wasted.


I will gladly vote against him in 2004, along with all of my friends from school.

Andrew_Baker wrote: No, actually, the real targets would be smaller ISP's because they are more easily pressured. Remember that AOL has investments in Washington. He won't be "shutting off the Internet", he'll just be blacking out dissidents. Communication = Community, after all. The big companies like AOL and Verizon could afford to block out some suspect customers, but smaller, local ISP's cannot.

And if you think this is a joke, look to China, where not only is all Internet content filtered, but people have gone to jail for accessing or publishing politically volatile websites.

China is a communist country.....what'd you expect?

China is a communist country.....what'd you expect?

Don't like that sentence! Those things have nothing to do with eachother. But that's not what this topic is about, so leave it...

I will gladly vote against him in 2004, along with all of my friends from school.

I'm very happy to hear that! I've never liked Bush, he's just someone who tries to give very simple answers on very complicated problems. You Americans have an army with the highest technology and you won't allow other countries (exept for your buddies, Europe...) to have such technology... In one word: arrogance. America decides which people have the power over the world (CIA helped Taliban, Mubutu all those corrupt presidents in Latin America).
What does Bush do for you people for social things? He doesn't care for nature. He only cares about increasing his power in the world. I don't like him.

September 11th shook the confidence in our government to protect us in the case of a national emergency (Bush f*cked up, plain and simple).

Don't want to defend Bush, but what could he have done?


Jelle (hope you still like me... -if you liked me in the first place- )

Jelle wrote:

China is a communist country.....what'd you expect?

Don't like that sentence! Those things have nothing to do with eachother. But that's not what this topic is about, so leave it...

I believe they have alot to do with each other. Communist countries have dictators who dictate what you can and can't do. Here, they're dictating what they can and can't view on the Internet.

he's just someone who tries to give very simple answers on very complicated problems.

Very true. Bush tends to see the world in black-and-white, which was never demonstrated as well as the day he branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil". From then on I knew that America's foreign policy is in serious trouble. Which doesn't even touch on his domestic agenda...

You Americans have an army with the highest technology and you won't allow other countries (exept for your buddies, Europe...) to have such technology... In one word: arrogance. America decides which people have the power over the world (CIA helped Taliban, Mubutu all those corrupt presidents in Latin America).

I agree that the American government has supported dictators and strongmen the world over in the name of economic stability. And it has come to burn us every time... we supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, armed him with chemical and biological weapons as a deterrent to the theocratic regime in Iran (the same weapons Bush accuses him of hiding.. how else would we know he has WMDs if WE were the ones who armed him?!) Furthermore, support of these undemocratic governments is contradictory to everything that the U.S. was founded upon.

what could he have done?

Bush is the commander in chief of the armed forces. It's his responsibility to ensure that an emergency does not develop into a tragedy such as on 9/11. But back to your question: he could have ensured that fighters would be available to deal with any hijacked planes. The fighters didn't even get into the air until it was way too late -- the only plane that might have been intercepted was the one that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. And that plane only crashed because the passengers realized the military response was essentially nonexistent and they tried to gain control of the plane to save their own lives.


Sorry Andrew for changing the topic somewhat on your post.. it's just that Bush is a troublesome character for many reasons, not just the one that you originally posted.

And I hate to say that there is little check-and-balancing going on these days in Washington. Not since the Republicans have control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress...

Communist countries have dictators who dictate what you can and can't do.

Hmm, ok... then Bush is just the greatest of them all.. He wants to dictate the whole world. And he isn't a communist is he...

Communism has it's origins in the fact that people did NOT have the same rights, the more money, the more rights... Communism wanted to give the people equal rights and equal possessions. Of course there were people like Stalin who did not care a lot about the people of their country, but! you must realise (please don't get me wrong on this, I don't want to defend Stalin too much) that before Stalin Russia lived in the Middle Ages... There was no technology, there were no social services (I don't know the correct term), and in some way he did a very good job. I don't want to say that live in Russia is good now, I don't know about that... but I guess it's better now than back than (thanks to Stalin).

To get back on Bush. There are two different worlds.
1. Different countries with different policy and every country does it's things based on it's policy.
2. One country thinks that it has the best policy and wants the whole world to do it the same way. That's Bush.
About the black-and-white, I couldn't agree more! Bush telling Iraq to unarm... It's like Hitler and the Devil fight about who owns what.
America is the strongest country in the world (nobody can disagree about that I think), and America abuses his position. It seems like your gouvernement don't care about the UNO. The world must unite, must be one country, but I don't want America dicating it!

Jelle

About the internet-thingy...
Would he be able to do that? I mean how (technicly) would he do that? How did China do it?
If they can do that? Why can't they stop people downloading MP3's and other illegal stuff from the net?

Jelle wrote:

Communist countries have dictators who dictate what you can and can't do.

Hmm, ok... then Bush is just the greatest of them all.. He wants to dictate the whole world. And he isn't a communist is he...


Jelle

Can you give any sort of evidence that he wants to dictate the whole worl? Just because he has the balls to confront and actually do something about the irradict leaders of the world that oppress their own people doesn't mean he wants to rule the world. Would you really want Sadam or any select other country leaders posessing weapons of mass destruction? Sadam has proven in the past that he can't be trusted so I see nothing wrong with putting pressure on him.

Any government leader has the ability to violate people's rights to enforce their own agendas. Only in democracies, politicians tend to avoid this sort of act because public disapproval can be a big problem. Being more sensitive about their images, politicians don't want to look like dictators. The senate is usually the only government body that can oppose an elected party's decision on passing a certain law.

Well, I won't officially state this, but I believe that the US is a totalitarian government and that's how any president can justify his actions. Even though the president has advisers and ministers to help him, that's still too much responsibility, especially for one person to handle. If the president screws up, the entire country suffers.

I believe the US is a totalitarian government and that's how any president can justify his actions.

I strongly disagree. I would say the U.S. government is still democratic in its roots, but the methods in which power is administered have been slowly but steadily grown more fascistic, more nationalistic with vision centered on the self country as the center of the world, as opposed to leading the rest of the world in a global peaceful coalition and creating equity and peace for all.

I do agree with you that too much power is concentrated on the Presidency, and the strain is too much for one man. Just look at how much Bill Clinton aged in 8 years! Compare pictures of him in 1992 to those in 2000.. he looks like he aged 20 years!

I think that the wars of the twenty-first century will be fought with ideologies more than weapons. Information has become the global currency, and it will be the deciding factor in which democratic principles will become the rule of the world, or be permanently pushed aside in the name of greater security, from ourselves.