News:

If you can't abuse it, it's not power.

Main Menu

Are You Free?

Started by Q. G. Pennyworth, November 11, 2013, 07:50:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Payne

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on November 13, 2013, 03:33:21 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:28:23 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on November 13, 2013, 03:24:04 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:22:40 PM
I bought a bag of Freedom and all I got was this lousy flag I'm not even allowed to wipe my ass on.

"I went to Afghanistan and all I got was this lousy prosthetic limb"

"I protested at the G8, and all I got was toxic derivatives and no prospect of ever retiring"

I stole a bunch of shit and all I got was to keep it. For free!

"I fought and died for Universal Suffrage, but all I got to vote for was John Jackson and Jack Johnson"

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:36:45 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on November 13, 2013, 03:33:21 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:28:23 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on November 13, 2013, 03:24:04 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:22:40 PM
I bought a bag of Freedom and all I got was this lousy flag I'm not even allowed to wipe my ass on.

"I went to Afghanistan and all I got was this lousy prosthetic limb"

"I protested at the G8, and all I got was toxic derivatives and no prospect of ever retiring"

I stole a bunch of shit and all I got was to keep it. For free!

"I fought and died for Universal Suffrage, but all I got to vote for was John Jackson and Jack Johnson"

I fought and died for ALL THE CAUSES, and all I got was a massive slogan collection

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Payne

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on November 13, 2013, 03:46:00 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:36:45 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on November 13, 2013, 03:33:21 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:28:23 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on November 13, 2013, 03:24:04 PM
Quote from: Payne on November 13, 2013, 03:22:40 PM
I bought a bag of Freedom and all I got was this lousy flag I'm not even allowed to wipe my ass on.

"I went to Afghanistan and all I got was this lousy prosthetic limb"

"I protested at the G8, and all I got was toxic derivatives and no prospect of ever retiring"

I stole a bunch of shit and all I got was to keep it. For free!

"I fought and died for Universal Suffrage, but all I got to vote for was John Jackson and Jack Johnson"

I fought and died for ALL THE CAUSES, and all I got was a massive slogan collection

...which was used to market more effectively to my disaffected teenage offspring.

P3nT4gR4m


I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Good Reverend Roger

Post clean up bump, per OP's request.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Junkenstein

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24954570

This guy is pretty free
QuoteA naked performance artist who nailed his scrotum to Red Square as a political protest may face up to five years in prison, Russian media report.

A criminal investigation has begun into Pyotr Pavlensky's actions at the Kremlin wall on Sunday, the interior ministry told news agencies in Moscow.

Pavlensky was arrested but released the following day and placed under travel restrictions.

However, the 29-year-old now faces the charge of hooliganism.

QuoteTiming his act to coincide with Police Day, Pavlensky said in a statement published on Sunday: "When the authorities turn the country into one big prison, openly robbing the populace and channelling funds to increase and enrich the police and other security agencies, society accepts arbitrariness and, having forgotten its advantage in numbers, brings the triumph of the police state closer through its inaction."

Pavlensky previously attracted attention by sewing his lips together in July of last year and demonstrating outside St Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral in support of the imprisoned Pussy Riot protesters. In May of this year, he wrapped his naked body in a "cocoon" of barbed wire outside the city's parliament.

No need to highlight the different level of treatment being given to this chap and the Pussy Riot Protesters. Surely nothing gender related in the mix here at all.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.


Q. G. Pennyworth

This is what The Stick looks like.

A hacker turned FBI informant, acting under the watchful eye of several government agencies, assembles a team of unwitting accomplices to break into a private security firm and sell information about their deals with the US government to a foreign national that has released mountains of data the state would rather see buried. When the data is extracted, one of the team members releases the data before it can be sold, removing any possibility of nailing that enemy of the state with a crime in the US (purchasing stolen goods). A journalist links to the data dump after it has already been reported on in national and international media outlets.

The person who released the data early just got sentenced to ten years in prison without the possibility of parole. The journalist is facing 105 years if convicted, and has already spent one year in jail awaiting trial.

An army intelligence officer witnesses multiple incidences of war crimes in Iraq, and is told to SHUT UP about it. She copies reams of data onto a disk labeled "Lady Gaga" and releases it to the public, including a video showing two journalists being murdered by trigger-happy helicopter gunmen, and two children injured for having the gall to be passing through on their way home from school. This is in addition, of course, to the other anonymous Iraqis who were caught in the crosshairs. The data released proves over and over how the US government has been using diplomatic channels to spy on their allies and enemies, in violation of international norms and in some cases laws.

The army private is serving 35 years in military prison. No one else is going to jail.


A bright young scholar, entrepreneur and activist devised a method to download thousands of files from a University network: files that were accessible to anyone who was on this deliberately open network to read, download, and print as they saw fit. He downloaded them faster than the company liked (though this was not in violation of their terms of service) and the company asked the University to look into the problem. When they discovered who was downloading the files, the secret service stepped in because of the young man's politics. Despite the company actively requesting that charges be dropped, and the University not requesting it, a criminal investigation went forward. All he wanted was to give the research back to the public who funded it.

The young man could not live with the knowledge that he would spend the rest of his life a convicted felon, and hanged himself instead.


A journalist who had already taken down a five star general with his investigative reporting told friends and colleagues he was on the verge of uncovering something even more explosive than his previous stories. His excitement turned to anxiety, and he warned others that he might need to "go dark" for a while as he continued his research. One night he went downstairs to ask his neighbor to borrow her car, as he was afraid his had been tampered with. She could not, because she needed the car later in the evening. He went out in his car.

It crashed into a tree at 100 mph, exploding in a fiery wreck. There were no skid marks.


DO YOU FUCKING GET IT YET?

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T SHUT UP. THIS IS WHAT THE STICK LOOKS LIKE.

It's not subtle and it's not discerning and it's not legal or moral or right. And we let it happen. We let it happen right in front of us day after day and they keep locking up literally anyone for any goddamn reason from "couldn't pay fines" to "participated in a protest" to petty possession of things that will be legal within the decade. There are over a hundred non-violent offenders in the US on life without parole. They arrest kids in school and bodily violate traffic offenders. They let off murderers and the architects of global financial catastrophes and shoot veterans in their homes.

THESE ARE NOT OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS. THIS IS WHAT THEY ADMIT TO, WHAT THEY ALLOW ON THE FRONT PAGES.

This is what The Stick looks like.

The Good Reverend Roger

Oh, it gets even funnier than that. 

Will respond after meeting.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Q. G. Pennyworth

I was asked to write a letter in support of Jeremy Hammond. Not "the internet in general was asked," his lawyer asked me specifically (along with hundreds of other people, but still). The judge didn't read any of the letters in the end, she gave him the maximum sentence allowed and called him a terrible person in a prepared statement she'd written weeks before the court date. Her husband is part of Stratfor's legal team, but no one could make her recuse herself.

I didn't write the letter, because I was scared.

It wouldn't have made any difference to him, to the outcome, but I'm still messed up.

When I got the call from my Aunt last year, she said mom had already passed, but I refused to hear it. I made dad get dressed and somebody drove, I think my sister-in-law, and we rushed. And when we got to the hospital, we ran. Not because it would have made any difference, she'd been gone almost twenty minutes by the time the car got there, but because we would want to know later that we ran. That we tried.

And I didn't try for Jeremy, because I was afraid.

Still not free.

The Good Reverend Roger

Here is what the stick looks like.

"All hourly employees not released due to right-sizing will take a 10% pay cut, effective the beginning of the current pay period, as a means of maintaining profitability by cutting fixed costs by $12 Mn."

Followed immediately by

"The CEO, CFO, and board of directors will receive a combined $12.5 Mn bonus for increasing shareholder/stakeholder value."

Don't laugh, something like this actually happened at US Airways, and then again at damn near every bank that took TARP funds.  Well, okay, laugh.  But it better not be a healthy laugh.

The stick also looks like the inside of a WalMart.  Dingy, seedy, and full of cheap fucking crap built elsewhere, on the cheap.  It looks like the neighborhood (read: loser) bar.  Dimly lit, mostly dirty, with life-long alcoholics more or less permanently attached to the stools that are the closest thing they want to a throne, a throne which they can afford as long as they can buy shitty draft beer in greasy glasses.

It looks like a Unicef commercial, while Tony Hayward circles the oil slick in his yacht, bitching about the inconvenience to his personal life.  It looks like a dead Pakistani baby, while everyone fights over Obamacare.

That is also what the stick looks like.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Q. G. Pennyworth

I think The Stick is its own book waiting to be written.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on November 18, 2013, 04:08:16 PM
I think The Stick is its own book waiting to be written.

Hell, yeah.

THE CARROT LEFT TOWN
THIS IS WHAT IS LEFT.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

The carrot, for humans, is exactly the same as the carrot for donkeys.  No matter how hard you work, you'll never reach it.  And for those who figure this out, or just get too tired or discouraged to keep trying for the carrot, we have the stick.

The carrot is why "pre-rich" works.  The stick is why "Will I get in trouble?" is the very FIRST question smart people ask in ANY risk/reward analysis.  This is why we jam people in prison for ridiculous shit like marijuana and improper use of Freedomâ„¢ without consulting the owner's manual.

One other thing:  If you're rich and powerful enough to be dangling the carrot in front of others, then to a certain extent you are immune to the stick as well.



" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Junkenstein

QuoteFollowed immediately by

"The CEO, CFO, and board of directors will receive a combined $12.5 Mn bonus for increasing shareholder/stakeholder value."

Don't laugh, something like this actually happened at US Airways, and then again at damn near every bank that took TARP funds.

Lets not just stop there. Think about any business that your betters (By which I mean, your government) has considered too big to fail. Automotive, Chemical, Energy production and transport infrastructure are all sectors that have been in receipt of massive bailouts. The stated reason is always that we MUST help these things or we will ALL pay. Cars with a myriad of options must be built and stockpiled. Power plants must be subsidised or suppliers will refuse to build them. DOW Chemicals gets a free pass on Bhopal because it's not affecting OUR freedom.

The reality of the Stick is that practically every business that measures profit and turnover in the tens of millions and billions has a horrific human cost every single day. From the workers in the 3rd world supplying raw materials and labour right the way down the chain, cost and profit potential is emphasised above the well being of any of your fellow humans. The Stick encourages you to exploit the guy next to you because fuck him. And If you don't fuck him, he'll fuck you. And if you both choose not to fuck each other, the boss will fuck you.

The Stick is fear. Fear of Punishment, Fear of consequences (Real or imagined), fear that the other guy will somehow come out better than you.

We all use the Stick too. It's only somewhat our fault, we've been beaten with it for so long that the methods of The Stick seem natural. Anyone who has ever had responsibilities over others at any point (Co-workers, children there's little difference) will in times of duress return to threats and The Stick to get the objective accomplished. What does this teach those you are influencing? That when you don't get your way, Pick up the Stick. When others are not acting according to your desires, Pick up the Stick.

Pretty soon, you can't remember to put the Stick down. 
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.