#SOPA and #PIPA. Inspired by Jimmy Wales

This is a long post — 2,427 words to be exact. You’ve been warned.

I don’t nor­mally talk or write about these kind of things because they can get out of hand PDQ. (That’s Pretty Darn Quick, if you didn’t know.)  It also makes me sound crazy, which may be true, but I don’t nor­mally adver­tise or sup­port that train of thought. How­ever this issue with SOPA and PIPA , and Jimmy Wale’s stand against it really moti­vated and inspired me to write this.

It is amaz­ing to me how peo­ple who make laws in this coun­try have no idea about things work in the real world. Rather it’s amaz­ing how we in the 99% don’t real­ize how the world is being cre­ated around us with­out our say so. And how those that do see it, are sti­fled and called lunatics, arrested, made fun of and treated as out­siders. To prove it, watch what hap­pened in any city that has had an Occupy event (Oak­land, New York, Wash­ing­ton DC) in this coun­try, and take a peek over­seas at the last years’ worth of Arab Spring upris­ings all over the Mid­dle East in the past year. What used to exist in the fringes of soci­ety is being brought full force into the cen­ter of our col­lec­tive attentions.

Syria’s Al-Hassad is proof pos­i­tive that you can kill peo­ple and still be king. What was hap­pen­ing behind closed doors is now exposed and all over the news. We already know that the rules that apply to the 99% don’t apply to the 1%. That was and is the basis of the whole Occupy movement.

Con­gress, Sen­ate, the Pres­i­dent, and the C-Level mem­bers of bil­lion dol­lar cor­po­ra­tions that put these elected offi­cials in office all oper­ate by a dif­fer­ent set of rules. This is, “how it always has been,” but that doesn’t make it right. Let’s see, our elected Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors have their own sep­a­rate health insur­ance pro­grams, their own sep­a­rate retire­ment and sav­ings plans, and many other things that the rest of us don’t have access to. And have you noticed how they have all been suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men and women first? Did you notice how they all have mil­lions and mil­lions of money to run for office? And that the one’s who win usu­ally have the largest amounts of money in their cam­paign war chests? Hmmmm…I won­der if this is all just coin­ci­dence.  How the hell can these peo­ple make laws when they are not sub­ject to the same rules, and pro­grams that we are? The answer is sim­ple: THEY CAN’T!

Do you think health­care is a really impor­tant sub­ject? For who? Not for the ones who can afford it, that’s for sure. The folks want­ing to leg­is­late the mat­ter don’t use the same sys­tems that the rest of us do. If John McCain had to go to the free clinic for meds or surgery to help him with his enlarged prostate (total exam­ple here) I won­der how he would fare? Let’s get you pre-qualified Mr. McCain so we can deter­mine what the best form of treat­ment is going to be for you. And oh…that process will take a few months and will con­sist of loads of stress that will fur­ther weaken your desire to pur­sue these options, and while all of that is going on, we won’t do a thing to help you feel bet­ter. We are pay­ing insur­ance com­pa­nies for the plea­sure of refus­ing our needs. Nice isn’t it?

And what about the folks who run MetLife, Humana, CIGNA, and any other insur­ance plan? My guess is that the C-Level folks run­ning those orga­ni­za­tions don’t even use the prod­ucts and ser­vices that they sell to us. And why should they? They use the money we send them every month and pay top dol­lar for the best med­i­cine and doc­tors that it can buy.

Now, the peo­ple that we have elected decide to take aim on the Inter­net. Wow! And along come SOPA and PIPA. Two sim­i­lar pieces of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that our gov­ern­ment feels will make things bet­ter for us Amer­i­cans? Really? Who are you lis­ten­ing to Sen­a­tor and Con­gress­man? It’s def­i­nitely not me, the guy who can’t even get FIOS on his block even though the peo­ple who live around me have it.

You’re lis­ten­ing to the cor­po­ra­tions and lob­by­ists that are funded by them. After all, they greased your pock­ets and helped you get into office, so why not do them a favor, right? The health­care issue is over (for now). We need some­thing else to do to jus­tify our exis­tence so.….let’s go after the Inter­net! That way we won’t have to worry about fix­ing the bud­get. (More on that later).

Let’s see, RIAA, MPAA and so many oth­ers in the media and enter­tain­ment sec­tor like SONY, Uni­ver­sal, etc., are all lob­by­ing to get these new bills passed as law under the guise that Piracy is ruin­ing them. Bull­shit!! They are try­ing to cre­ate (aka, cram down our throats) new laws that favor them and their old school ways of think­ing and oper­at­ing step all over the 99%.

Rather than focus on being pro­gres­sive and con­tin­u­ally pro­duc­ing con­tent and ser­vices that com­pel us to spend our hard earned money with them, they want to focus on keep­ing things to them­selves and get­ting paid for them over and over again for stuff that they think is valu­able, but really isn’t.

I am not opposed to pay­ing some­one for his or her efforts, and I am not opposed to peo­ple mak­ing a liv­ing by doing what they love. Every­one should be rewarded for their efforts and their con­tri­bu­tions. It’s why I am glad that Lionel Richie gets a check from Apple (and the music label that did the deal) when I just bought his great­est hits album.

But to sit there an say we don’t need to con­tinue to evolve, improve and enhance what we are doing, and HOW we are doing it is plain dumb. This is why I wish some com­pany like Apple would decide that the music stu­dios and labels suck and wanted to work with artists directly? I won­der how that would shake up the indus­try. Yes I know, some say that the devil you know is bet­ter than the devil you don’t, but it’s still fun to think about.

This recur­ring theme that shows up in health­care, the Inter­net, and the econ­omy is part of a greater issue that is dis­cussed in the movie, “THRIVE.” You can check it out at www.thrivemovement.com.

The 99% of us have the oppor­tu­nity to once again tell the 1% run­ning this coun­try that they are nuts and that they don’t under­stand what they are doing or talk­ing about. That they need to stop cater­ing to folks that line their pock­ets with cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions and start look­ing out for the peo­ple that they are sup­posed to be tak­ing care of.

SOPA and PIPA are bad. Period. End of Story.

Leg­is­late my online rights and free­doms now and that is a stepping-stone to leg­is­lat­ing my right to bear arms, my right to Free­dom of Speech, and my right to lib­erty and the pur­suit of happiness.

Con­trol what con­tent I can or can­not see online just because you heard it was bad? Really? Shut down a site with­out due process? Seri­ously? I thought we lived in Amer­ica. When did we become a dictatorship?

Look­ing back, this ero­sion of our rights started soon after 9/11. Gov­ern­ment took advan­tage of  a huge, scary, moti­vat­ing event to get peo­ple to be more scared of ter­ror­ism than the true ter­ror of liv­ing with­out your right to pri­vacy. Under the guise of ter­ror­ism, they mon­i­tor your cell phones and all other forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­out a war­rant (Hello Car­rier IQ) in the name of, “Pro­tect­ing the Home­land.” Seri­ously? Give me a break!

They think we have a short mem­ory. And most of us do. Go back 15 or 20 years and com­pare what rights and free­doms we have today vs. what we had back then. You’ll see that we <ahem> “older” Amer­i­cans are slowly being reduced and phased out for a new gen­er­a­tion that accepts these infringe­ments as the norm, rather than the excep­tion. And is show­ing up in many areas. Why and how are we allow­ing this to hap­pen? We are slowly being con­di­tioned and swal­lowed up by the Borg.

Let’s think about edu­ca­tion for sec­ond. No Child left behind? It’s really every child left behind. Our edu­ca­tion sys­tems reached medi­oc­rity years ago when they started teach­ing our future lead­ers how to pass a stan­dard­ized test rather than teach them to think inde­pen­dently. And peo­ple won­der why kids are stay­ing home until their mid to late 20’s; and why China is fast over­tak­ing the USA in many areas of tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion. Let’s let our kids become robots and par­rot back what the teach­ers are read­ing from their text­books, which are pub­lished by the very same media con­glom­er­ates that line the pock­ets of those leg­is­la­tors that I bet you already for­got about.

Let’s talk finance. First it was the Euro­pean Zone, now it’s the Asian Zone. Pretty soon there will be a new zone that is cur­rently called the North Amer­i­can Cur­rency Union and will con­sist of Canada, the USA, and Mex­ico. Here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_currency_union.

Wait, that link won’t work until tomor­row. Why? Because Wikipedia founder, Mr. Jimmy Wales, has the tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to stand up and say that these bills are (remem­ber their names?) just plain wrong and un-American. There is a bet­ter way to pro­tect copy­right. Hint: it starts by revamp­ing how we view and value the artists’ and their work.

Back to finances. Schol­ars, gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and con­spir­acy the­o­rists are call­ing this new NACU a “the­o­ret­i­cal” model. But let me ask you this: were the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA) and the Secu­rity and Pros­per­ity Part­ner­ship of North Amer­ica (SPP) the­o­ret­i­cal? Heck no, those were just the first and sec­ond rounds. This live and very real, “the­o­ret­i­cal model” will be a new and improved ver­sion that will address the mis­takes made dur­ing the first (NAFTA) and sec­ond (SPP) attempts to unify our region.

Folks say that gov­ern­ments are opposed, but guess what? When a pri­vate insti­tu­tion called the Cen­tral Bank con­trols your debt and charges you high inter­est, you don’t get to be in charge and call the shots! Just look at what hap­pens when the World Bank decides to “help” coun­tries that are fis­cally irre­spon­si­ble but have great amounts of nat­ural resources. The WB gives cash and cur­rency, for inter­est, and that inter­est is paid in said resources, leav­ing the coun­try with noth­ing! Bad, bad, bad.

Wake up, peo­ple. These changes are com­ing. His­tory pro­vides loads of evi­dence about what is really going on, and movies like Thrive are out there if you really want to get a greater view of what’s going on. We can still change the course of events.

The cur­rent eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion is a direct reflec­tion of the plan set forth by the 1%. What other choice is there except to start a new cur­rency and eco­nomic sys­tem? When you can pay off your debts, what do you do? Start over. It’s called bank­ruptcy. We are pay­ing more money toward inter­est on the Amer­i­can Debt than we are gen­er­at­ing in a day.

Note: I can­not find any source to prove this state­ment true. Is this Big Media at work squash­ing access to this data? Maybe. Just the same way that are not talk­ing about SOPA except on CSPAN. Why are they going to let the news chan­nels that they run crit­i­cize the very things they are championing?

EVEN MORE DEBT by bor­row­ing more money, which means that there will be even HIGHER Inter­est that gets paid for by our TAXES. Guess what that means? Yep, your taxes will increase! Obama is smart. Let’s give you the tax break for a few months now, and make you pay for it in the long term. This way you won’t remem­ber what the heck hap­pened and why. There is a rea­son that the US credit rat­ing dropped from AAA to AA, people.

When the USA defaults on its debts to the US Cen­tral Bank, and a new world order is estab­lished as a result, the ones who are cur­rently at the top will still be there again in the new sys­tem. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I just won­der what will hap­pen when these 3 sep­a­rate zones become a sin­gle zone, and there are no more bound­aries sep­a­rat­ing our coun­tries, our economies, and our lives.

In many ways, this the­ory that I am spout­ing off will have pos­i­tive results. We will, lit­er­ally, all be one. One world, one mon­e­tary sys­tem, one planet. It’s pretty crazy to think that all this stuff that is going on now, could actu­ally be good for every­one in the very long term. How’s that for see­ing a sil­ver lin­ing in all this mess. HAHA!

The times have changed, the means have changed, but the finan­cial sys­tems are still the same. The process of evo­lu­tion means that we out­grow what used to serve us. How is it that we can go from the Stone Age, through the Dark Ages, through the Renais­sance, through the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion, and now the Infor­ma­tion Age, and yet still use and par­tic­i­pate in the exact same finan­cial sys­tem that has been around long before recorded his­tory? Does that make sense?

Like I said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If you really want to, “be the change…” start with your own pocket book. Ask ques­tions, study, and do your own research. Don’t let my own inde­pen­dent thoughts and opin­ions sway you. That’s not what they are intended to do. Learn, apply your own expe­ri­ences, thoughts and wis­dom to the sit­u­a­tion and think inde­pen­dently. Don’t become a drone that the Edu­ca­tion sys­tem, our gov­ern­ment and our cor­po­ra­tions want and have trained you to be.

This is what is so cool about being in the USA. I can say all of this on my own blog, share it with whomever I want, and not have be fear­ful of what I say. This may change over the next few decades, unless you speak up and out.

I had no inten­tion of writ­ing this, and then post­ing this to my blog, but I was really inspired. Thanks, Jimmy, for stand­ing up and mak­ing peo­ple pay atten­tion. This blog post is a direct result of your actions, and their impact on me. No, dear reader, you can’t blame him for my post. Instead we should be giv­ing Jimmy a col­lec­tive high-five!

Peace,
Shawn