Make Sure to Tell Congress You Want the Rights of Chinese Workers

Since the Great Recession of 2008, it seems that the debate in America has focused around jobs. Everyone keeps asking, “Where are the jobs?” Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you’ve been asking the president and John Boehner for jobs. Well I’ve got some ideas for you. It’s really quite simple if you think about it. All of us can take these easy steps and the jobs will have to come back to America. I’m sure of it.

1. Stop asking for workers rights. Unions are the reason why jobs go overseas, not cheap labor and deregulation. We as Americans demand too damn much. We want our voices to be heard, we want safe working conditions, we want at least 2 weeks of vacation, we want health care, we want benefits after we’ve worked for so many years and we want maternity leave.

What we should be doing is taking our lead from the way the Chinese government and corporations treat their citizens. The workers of Foxconn work over 12 hours, get paid $17 a day and are committing suicide because of their working conditions. That must mean they’re really working hard! If you want to make it in this world, you’ve got to work hard! And look, they make iPhones. So they must be doing a good job. A few lost lives here or there is understandable when making a great product like the iPhone. Remember, business comes first.

2. Call your senator and representative and tell them to lower the minimum wage. Remember, we’ve got to look out for the businesses and their needs. Money comes before humane treatment of persons. Oh, how we Americans miss the days when we had people working for us… For free…

3. Deregulate all industry because the bottom line is what matters. If businesses have to pay for the cost of regulations, it’s only reasonable that they lay people off and put them out of their homes. That’s what they get for telling businesses how to run things. It makes the most sense to allow industries to regulate themselves. This way, there will be no need to lobby Congress and buy politicians. See, this saves corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in the long run.

4. Bring the Swiss bank accounts to America—Somewhere in Texas or Oklahoma would be preferable. These states are preferable because they’re business friendly and they have a history of putting business before the livelihood of their people. Now, when companies want to avoid taxes and cut corners, they can do so right here in America. No need to do it in foreign countries anymore.

5. And lastly, take Gingrich’s lead and let’s make the poor and minorities into janitors. By pushing our kids and minorities into indentured servitude, they’ll learn the meaning of hard work and will get off food stamps. If our tax dollars aren’t spent on entitlements, that means more can be spent on corporate bailouts, corporate personhood and the Bush tax cuts.

By giving successful multimillion dollar companies subsidies to do what they’re already making billions from, this will surely bring jobs back to America the beautiful. It’s not like they’d just hoard the money or anything.

So, my fellow Americans, just follow these easy steps and we’ll take America back 50-60 years, when we were so great. Ah, the good ‘ole days.

*Note to the wise, this is satire. I don’t really believe this. But the people in power do. And if we don’t give a damn about what they want to do with this country, we are just as guilty for our downfall as they are.

The Internet’s Gone Crazy With Lawlessness Run Amuck

SEIZED!

On Thursday, the Department of Justice seized the anonymous file-sharing website Megaupload and charged seven people in connection with the site with running a criminal enterprise based on Internet piracy.

The DOJ calls this the biggest case of copyright infringement they’ve ever experienced.

In a grand jury indictment, The DOJ accused Megaupload of $500 million worth of damages to the entertainment industry. Megaupload is also under fire for making $175 million from premium subscriptions and advertisements.

Four of the seven executives of Megaupload were arrested on Friday while three others remain at large. They have been charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The men could face more than 20 years in prison.

Of those arrested in New Zealand was the infamous Mr. Dotcom (Kim Schmitz).

There were 20 search warrants executed in the United States and eight other countries including New Zealand. Fifty million dollars worth of assets were seized by the DOJ including a number of servers and 18 domain names that made up Megaupload’s file-sharing sites.

The police raided Dotcom’s mansion in Auckland in two helicopters. They arrived to find Dotcom is his safe room with a shortened shotgun in his possession. New Zealand police seized $4.8 million worth of exotic cars and froze $11 million that was in his various bank accounts.

The seizure of Megaupload came soon after supporters of SOPA and PIPA had to withdraw  their support for the bills because of the explosion of Internet activism and protests. Wednesday, many websites joined in the activism against SOPA and PIPA by going black. Wikipedia went completely black for the day while other sites like WordPress.com censored certain pages to make a statement.

Wordpress during the blackout on Wednesday

That day, the hacker group Anonymous raided the DOJ’s website and other websites associated with the entertainment industry. They had this to say about SOPA and other forms of government and corporate censorship on the Internet:

The most important parts of their message goes as follows:

The United States government has mastered this corrupt way of giving us a false sense of freedom. We think we are free and can do what we want, but in reality we are very limited and restricted as to what we can do, how we can think, and even how our education is obtained. We have been so distracted by this mirage of freedom, that we have just become what we were trying to escape from.

For too long, we have been idle as our brothers and sisters were arrested. During this time, the government has been scheming, plotting ways to increase censorship through means of I S P block aides, D N S blockings, search engine censorship, website censorship, and a variety of other methods that directly oppose the values and ideas of both Anonymous as well as the founding fathers of this country, who believed in free speech and press!

—

I’m confused just as much as anyone is when it comes to the recent actions taken by our government on the file sharing website Megaupload. Why is our government pushing for freedom-restricting legislature like SOPA and PIPA if they can just go out and do what they did with Megaupload?

It is a little bit disheartening for opponents of Internet censorship, but Megaupload and it’s creators had to have know what they were getting themselves into. Hollywood and the record industry do not play around when it comes to their products. The government and the entertainment industry don’t give a lot of leeway to people who are stealing their content and making millions off of it. You can’t plead ignorant here.

The government was probably in the right doing this, but why would they do it now? Why would they choose to take these actions when the sentiment around the nation is on the side of protecting Internet freedom?

Wikipedia blackout

I’m left wondering what this means for the battle against SOPA and PIPA and the fight to maintain a healthy Internet. This is only the beginning of the fight. I’m not at all fooled into thinking the battle to maintain net neutrality is over.

The mega corporations and the government are very aware of the power the Internet has given the average citizen to be informed (although they do leave me often questioning how smart they are…). An informed public leads to a public making rational decisions about who they vote for, what they consume and how they handle their money. This means that the Internet is drastically changing how politics and money are handled in America. This means that the government will have a harder time controlling the flow of money and information. I’m sure this makes them very uncomfortable.

*Also, I think this visual is telling of the impact Occupy, Anonymous and Internet activism had on SOPA:

A visual of the impact of the Internet blackout on Wednesday

 

America is Tired and Sick; Poor in Mind, Body and Spirit

photo courtesy of subrealism.blogspot.com

We are not free because we live in fear. In America, it is almost certain that whatever negative event happens to us, it will be responded to from a perspective of fear. When we act out of fear, we are unable to evaluate reality from an objective point of view. We are unable to see the truth for what it is when our first reaction to anything is fight or flight—We also see the world through the lens of hate. We may hate ourselves, fear others, dismiss our country, hate every country but ours or just be mad at everything because of our situation; This invites negative energy to say the least. But this is our situation. Nobody chose to be in this situation, but us. So we have the ability to change that situation instead of always projecting our unbalance outward. Reacting to and spreading fear will only lead to a world that will welcome our despair with gifts of pain and death.

The universe is always trying to reach a state of balance, so you best believe that if you flood the energy field with negative signals, it will find its way back to you. More importantly, if you upload and download negative signals or information, your computer’s health will be compromised and it will  be more susceptible to viruses. You can apply this metaphor to human beings and essentially America. We humans are machines just like a computer; Garbage in, garbage out. Is it a coincidence that even though we are a country of great wealth we are the most poor in terms of spiritual wealth? We are the most unhealthy, mentally unstable, unhappy, sick, overworked, undereducated, disease-ridden and unloved? I rarely believe in coincidences, I just see correlations and causation. Our pain is projected outward and instead of seeing our impact because of that frame of mind, we blame others for reacting to our negative energy bubble. We are incapable of looking within ourselves—Or maybe we are afraid of what we’ll see if we do.

If you view the world from a perspective of love and acceptance, that energy will return to you. I’ve seen it happen. You might not get what you want immediately, but the universe operates in ways beyond our conscience. It will welcome you with what you need if you seek it. This is not to say that there is no such thing as evil people and people won’t try to take advantage of you if you seek love, but welcoming love allows for you to see the world for what it is. If you don’t hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, you are living an unbalanced life and you’re not living from a perspective of love.

I said all of that to say this: Something happened to the American psyche and we no longer have the capacity to see the good in those who think or look different from us. Maybe because we are a trauma-based society, we have opened ourselves up to being taken advantage of. At one point in time, Americans fought through adversity and became stronger because of it. Now we use adversity as an excuse to give up and defend for whose life is more pitiful or unfair than the other’s. As the saying goes, a man who justifies his limitations surely makes them real. In other words, how you see the world will have an effect on how you participate in it. I don’t know if this mindset was pushed by our media or by our government, but at the end of the day, that really doesn’t matter because we bought what they sold us.

courtesy of blog.jungle8.com

It’s as if because we have differences, we have no similarities. In the past, our differences were much more noticeable, but we found ways to overcome those differences and work together towards an ultimate goal. Now our differences are less noticeable, yet we are more divided and polarized. I’m just ready for that pendulum to swing into the era of acceptance, love and conscience. Hm, seems like a long shot, but I have faith. After all, without faith, why do we keep on pushing?

A lot to be thankful for and a long way to go

TSA scanner

I’ve been nurtured to fight to live the life of independence, freedom, and good-will. I will continue to stand beside my convictions until the day I leave Earth. Some may dispute my values and the way I go about them and that’s fine. Some people think the issues I discuss are not important issues, but I see it differently. I am a vigilant person while others may choose to be less watchful out of feelings of apathy and/or despair. And that’s their right. But I will argue for the contrary. I will make the argument that nothing comes easy and anything worth having is worth fighting for because tomorrow things could take a turn for the worst if left unattended and unchecked.

These values and convictions I hold are values cultivated from American society. The same society that enslaved my people and made sure we weren’t even considered a whole person is the same society that allowed for us to fight back and take our lives from the clutches of death. The story of America is one of pain and triumph, but how is that different from life? If it wasn’t for that history, I would not be the person I am today, fighting for that same vision my ancestors so valiantly died for.

I’m going to keep fighting whenever I see injustice and infringements on the rights of people who have the right to seek any opportunity they please without fear of government retribution.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the people who own more than half of the world’s wealth don’t give a damn about anyone outside of their immediate family relationships. They can’t help but to think a few years ahead. They don’t care about what is best for the country, but what is best for them. And that my friends is a cultural downfall of this country.

They play with our lives strictly for political reasons because their actions are far from rational. We elect them under one guise, and once they get in, they deceive the voter and act in accordance to special, world interests. Is it really surprising that these politicians are shipping jobs overseas, whining about taxes that are the lowest they’ve been in 60 yrs, fighting to remove any agency that is not for profit, accumulating more wealth after the financial collapse, supporting legislation that increases our rich-to-poor gap to levels of Egypt and Cameroon, working to create spy technology and profiting off of our daily habits that are made into statistics thanks to Google and social media sites, fighting to make sure people who love each other cannot have the same rights as people who love each other in different ways, ignoring and diminishing the powers of Congress that check the Executive Branch, unanimously voting on laws that conflict with the 4th amendment and pushing for more voter restrictions? Actually, it should be surprising. I don’t care if it’s been like that forever, it shouldn’t be like this.

I’ve heard numerous stories of our country seizing electronic devices at airports from persons who participated in protests, people getting sick from TSA/airport x-rays, women being groped in airports, persons in jail not having sufficient food or clean toilets (as many as 50 persons per toilet), cops threatening citizens who film their abuse of power, women being denied compensation from companies who are obviously discriminating because the company is too big to fail, banks stealing homes from people who pay their mortgage on time and in full, women being turned away from health coverage they paid into because pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition, states eliminating abortion clinics (which are LEGAL) leaving women without an option in case their pregnancy goes wrong and worst of all I’ve heard people tell me “So what?” What they’re really saying is “So what if they mess with my rights? I have such little faith and confidence in myself that I don’t care if they’re screwing me over.”

Because we can’t change the hearts of lonely men and women, the best thing we can do is change the one corner of the universe we have complete power over: ourselves. If each of us puts more time into ourselves and understands our potential I think we can change this culture hate, fear and false security into one of understanding, confidence and true freedom. Because there’s a revolution happening in each of us and it will not be shown on reality TV.

Message to Americans from Former CIA Agent (Real?)

Broken American Dreams

Doctor takes blood from Tuskegee farmer

Thinking about how the American government recently apologized to Guatemalans for injecting their citizens with venereal diseases, I could not help but think about the infamous, American, Tuskegee Experiment. Skimming through the details on Wikipedia, I couldn’t help but look at the picture and see these people joking and the black people (the subjects) not aware of what is being done to them. Words could not describe how I felt. Turning to the poet, Nas, I began to dissect his lyrics:

Then I felt like writing about this:

Politicians and pundit just don’t understand how their rhetoric can really lead to anything bad. Well if they believe their rhetoric will get people to do good acts, why can’t it lead people to commit heinous acts? This rhetoric leads directly to a mindset most of us have.

The over-belief in God saving us from the evil, the over-belief in the afterlife (i.e., heaven), and the over-belief in the “American Dream” has us waiting for a tomorrow that will never come. We spend so much time preparing for tomorrow, we go through life like robots. No being aware of today, at all.

The “waiting-for-tomorrow” syndrome, it accounts for our poor health, bad credit, destruction of the environment, high divorce rates, disconnect with families, disconnect with communities, increasing suicide rates, bad decisions, poor race relations, and most importantly, our lack of awareness. Here is a good look at how aware America is.

It has us waiting for the moment and in reality, we’ll never reach it because no matter what position we are in, we want more. The only logical thing to combat that is to understand that life is more important. Every second counts. Living in the moment is something the monks do, but in the form of meditation; Focusing on the exact moment. It’s ambiguous and crazy to think about.

In order for us to progress as a nation. We have to change our definition of “The American Dream”. It can no longer be about wealth, status, and addiction to work. We have to make our dream about community bonds, individual strength, self-actualization, understanding, balance, and empathy (sum it up and you have love). If we are to continue to focus on material things like wealth, net-worth, and status, we will never become a great nation.

Poison

The mentality of a better tomorrow is an approach to life that is only human, but our addiction to the rhetoric, the fantasies, the lies, the media, the wars, and a fairly comfortable way of living have pushed that approach near the edge. We have become overconfident and unable to see the truth because things have happened, fortunately, in our favor. Because we are alive today through a number of lucky and rare events, we misunderstand that as being blessed and think it will last forever. It is only an illusion. We have become complacent and in that complacency, blind to our mistakes, blind to the way we’re living.

It won’t be long before we will become full of broken dreams, broken hearts, broken families, and essentially, a broken society. Some may say we’re already there. Change always starts with us. Each of us in fighting the battle of our lives within our own minds. Before we become so quick to blame society and those in power for the ills in our society, let’s take a look at ourselves, the ones who elect these leaders. We are a part of this society. Maybe it’s not society that is broken. Maybe we are. This and another CNN article put our situation into perspective.

This Jay-Z & 9th Wonder song captures the better parts of “the American Dream”: