Speaking of ALEC:
www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html)
QuoteThey proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups.
QuoteSome of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members.
QuoteOne of the group's model bills, "The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to "defame the facility or its owner." Violators would be placed on a "terrorist registry."
What was it in that other thread? Criminalize all the things?
:horrormirth:
Quote from: deadfong on April 07, 2013, 05:03:44 PM
Speaking of ALEC:
www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html)
QuoteThey proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups.
QuoteSome of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members.
QuoteOne of the group's model bills, "The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to "defame the facility or its owner." Violators would be placed on a "terrorist registry."
What was it in that other thread? Criminalize all the things?
:horrormirth:
Because factory farms shouldn't be
interfered with when they beat cows with tire irons and keep them standing in poop knee deep.
FREE ENTERPRISE
There's no damn reason at all that anyone should need or even want to know where their meat comes from.
Quote from: deadfong on April 07, 2013, 05:03:44 PM
Speaking of ALEC:
www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html)
QuoteThey proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups.
QuoteSome of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members.
QuoteOne of the group's model bills, "The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to "defame the facility or its owner." Violators would be placed on a "terrorist registry."
What was it in that other thread? Criminalize all the things?
:horrormirth:
Yep. Have any of you watched "Food, Inc"? It's... disturbing. People are afraid to say that they don't eat meat because they can get sued. Farmers losing their contracts because they let journalists into their farms.
This is a good topic and really deserves its own thread. I'll be writing about it a lot this term because it's the focus of my writing class.
Quote from: Cainad on April 07, 2013, 05:18:29 PM
There's no damn reason at all that anyone should need or even want to know where their meat comes from.
IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT E COLI TELL THEM TO PUT SOME CLOROX OR SOMETHING IN IT
And yeah. Food Inc. is an eye opener and a half.
Hey, if you guys don't mind, I'm going to request a thread split because I actually really do think Deadfong's link and topic deserve a whole thread. I'd like to delve into it a little more deeply, because the food corporation issues are really, really fucked up.
YES. THREAD SPLIT PLS.
Split. Feel free to rename the thread - I gave it this one for reasons of personal amusement.
Quote from: Cain on April 07, 2013, 05:46:23 PM
Split. Feel free to rename the thread - I gave it this one for reasons of personal amusement.
:lulz: I like it.
Isn't it amusing that showing bad practices on a factory livestock farm could fall under the heading of "ecological terrorism", considering what those farms do to the ecology?
MOAR E-COLI ON MY SPINACH, PLEASE.
So, we have issues like highly virulent strains of e-coli emerging as a direct result of factory farming practices, and more people becoming ill or dying of food-borne illnesses every year, often as a result of spraying unprocessed animal waste on vegetable crops, plus we have contaminated water and, best of all, the emergence of FUCKING KILLER VIRUSES that breed in these environments like they were petri dishes, but if you try to call attention to this or show images of it, you're a goddamned terrorist.
Yay.
"Terrorism" now equals non-violent action that threatens the status quo / bottom line. I swear, no matter how pessimistic I was when I was younger, I never really believed we'd end up living in 1984.
The thread split is a good idea, by the way. Though I had a moment of mild panic when I first saw it - I didn't remember posting a new thread with such an awesome title. Was afraid maybe pd.com was doing things to me.
This seems like a really obvious freedom of the press issue. I can't see this standing up in court at all.
Missing the point, here.
Defamation now equals terrorism.
MORE TO THE POINT:
Terrorism is no longer "causing terror to achieve a political objective", and is now "anything we don't like."
It's terrorism if you're trying to scare people. Killing them is just fine. :horrormirth:
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 08, 2013, 12:31:52 AM
Missing the point, here.
Defamation now equals terrorism.
MORE TO THE POINT:
Terrorism is no longer "causing terror to achieve a political objective", and is now "anything we don't like."
And cameras are the same as bombs.
Unless it's THEIR cameras.
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on April 08, 2013, 02:33:30 AM
It's terrorism if you're trying to scare people. Killing them is just fine. :horrormirth:
Worse even than that - a terrorist is now someone who tries, not to scare people, but to enable them to make better informed choices about how they live their lives. Facts become a casualty because facts are now defined as tools of terror.
I would say that the only ones who are scared are the powers that want to keep us in the dark, except that they know they have nothing to fear from us.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 08, 2013, 12:31:52 AM
Missing the point, here.
Defamation now equals terrorism.
MORE TO THE POINT:
Terrorism is no longer "causing terror to achieve a political objective", and is now "anything we don't like."
Yep.
I'm going to have to be honest here - terrorism was always "something we didn't like". I have a professor whose entire postdoctoral thesis was terrorism was a way for states to delegitimise violence done by people not caused by them or in support of them, and there is a good body of evidence to prove his point (for instance, when the Cosa Nostra were blowing up judges and police commanders with car bombs, that was not considered terrorism, because the Cosa Nostra were tight with the Sicilian Christian Democrats, the ruling Italian party for most of the First Republic. If you're not threatening the status quo, you're a militant group, or a self-defence group, or an organized crime group, but most certainly not terrorists).
The only innovation here is that the terrorism doesn't even have to require violence, but things had been moving that way for a while now, like with offering legal advice to terrorist organizations being considered "material support" and so on.
Terrorism is nothing but the new word for "Communism". It doesn't mean anything per se, it's a pavlovian trigger that sets the electorate masses frothing at the mouth and demanding less freedom.
Terrorism is - enemy of the party - terrorist is the generic name for the guy featured in today's two minute hate
Terrorism, according to the dictionary (will no doubt be edited in later editions) means using violence against non-combatants to achieve political objectives.
Current record for largest and most successful act of terrorism is held by the USA for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 where between 150 and 250 thousand mainly civilian fatalities ensured Japanese surrender in less than a week.
America has subsequently declared war on terrorism which is considered badwrong when other people do it.
This surprises me little.
Activists have been classed as "Domestic Terrorists" for a while in the UK.
The violence aspect was eroded a long time ago. As I understand it, a closer definition would be
"Disagreeing with an authority figure in a location likely to be seen, heard and understood by the larger public"
Obviously the only sensible way to deal with this is to increase the number of secret trials so you don't have to encounter this nonsense. Carry on about your business....Or else.
This is all too close to home and :horrormirth:
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime. Our best hope is for three people to gather together. One takes a picture of animal abuse and the other 2 stand on either side of him and each take a picture getting the others in the shot.
The person who took the first picture gets arrested for taking a picture of a crime. The other two both get arrested for taking a picture of someone taking a picture of a crime. But wait! The two also got pictures of each other taking a picture of someone taking a picture for a crime. As this is a new crime they each get charged again but since the same picture also showed themselves taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime there are more charges.
Now the two on the side have been charged with taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime, as well as with taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime, and also for taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a crime. Naturally this generates another crime.
Basically we do this until the court system breaks or we divide by zero. Whichever happens first.
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 02:28:40 PM
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.
Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 09, 2013, 03:14:38 PM
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 02:28:40 PM
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.
Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.
It's quite simple really, "crime" does not mean what you've been led to believe it does. Incidentally, most "criminals" I've met are merely people who either realised this instinctively or worked it out for themselves.
I'll spell it out. "Crime" is an opinion held by people who are in a position to force their opinion upon you. It's a double edged billy-club, too. If they say it's not a crime then it's not a crime. Even if they arrested
you for it yesterday.
"Big criminals hang small ones."
State formation in this day and age is a little beyond that of competing mafia gangs (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ow.ly%2Fdocs%2F0%2520Tilly%252085_5Xr.pdf&ei=uDJkUY_YBYur0gXCk4DIAw&usg=AFQjCNEgvBxQ2QHh7QSlCYOo-rhPLzYNcQ&sig2=EY9sN2IK5fNxTcRTthsGgA&bvm=bv.44990110,d.d2k), but the mentality is still very much there.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on April 09, 2013, 04:23:00 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 09, 2013, 03:14:38 PM
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 02:28:40 PM
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.
Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.
It's quite simple really, "crime" does not mean what you've been led to believe it does. Incidentally, most "criminals" I've met are merely people who either realised this instinctively or worked it out for themselves.
I'll spell it out. "Crime" is an opinion held by people who are in a position to force their opinion upon you. It's a double edged billy-club, too. If they say it's not a crime then it's not a crime. Even if they arrested you for it yesterday.
To me, "crime" is to willfully or negligently deprive another person of their rights.
Given that standard, guess who is the biggest criminal gang in my country?
Quote from: Charles TillyIf protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries,a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government.
I love Charles Tilly, in the same manner as I love Smedley Butler.
But that's not the correct answer.
The correct answer is: The largest criminal gang in the USA is its citizenry itself. The USA is the biggest collection of freedom-hating assmonglers that ever drew breath. What makes it particularly horrible is that we've even co-opted the words "freedom" and "liberty" to mean "conformity" and "police state". The government didn't do this. Goldman Sachs didn't do this. The American public did this, and they wouldn't have it any other way.
Oh, I was quoting it for people who didn't click on the PDF. Because I know some people wont.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 09, 2013, 03:14:38 PM
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 02:28:40 PM
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.
Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.
I got a feeling it's going to be a long century.
Couldn't agree more about crime being whatever arbitrary thing authorities decide. Downright insidious.
Quote from: Cain on April 09, 2013, 04:57:11 PM
Oh, I was quoting it for people who didn't click on the PDF. Because I know some people wont.
Charles Tilly has long been a hero of mine. He and Smedley Butler - for vastly different reasons - had the knowledge and the moral authority to tell it like it is. Butler won 3 medals of honor (actually 2 and a brevet medal, which at the time was the same thing). It's kind of hard to question his patriotism. Tilly was the father of modern sociology, and breathed fire at the podium. Not like a preacher, but more as if fire were his natural atmosphere.
And I didn't click on the PDF because I
can't click on the PDF. I tried, but nannywall. There seems to be no actual rhyme or reason to what it allows and won't allow.
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 05:00:44 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 09, 2013, 03:14:38 PM
Quote from: McGrupp on April 09, 2013, 02:28:40 PM
I've never understood how it can be a crime to take a picture of a crime.
Then this most emphatically is NOT going to be your decade.
I got a feeling it's going to be a long century.
Couldn't agree more about crime being whatever arbitrary thing authorities decide. Downright insidious.
For some people, it won't be very long at all.