Internet an awesome threat - Jay Rockefeller

The oligarchy is getting restless again. Now they're worried (and justly so: email spam is evil incarnate) about the internet. Although, if you've been reading about ISPs such as AT&T capping internet usage by overcharging their customers for what is essentially a public utility, the following should come as no surprise.




current-events

New photo Website

We've been somewhat behind the times in updating this blog, because my photography has been taking up more and more of my time, not to mention my day job.

Short and sweet, we have a new World Wide Web site featuring my recent photo work (sample above). Blogger's OK for some things, but we really need to see some pictures much bigger than Blogger can handle, which is why we are now a 'Dot Com'! Check out our new site (with amazing expanding Flash) on the World Wide Intertubes at www.glennprimm.com.

Thanks for your support.

current-events

With friends like these...

"When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features."

It's a win-win situation, folks. We get your vital statistics, and you get to show us your boobs.

current-events

Do something positive for the New Year

Want to do something positive for real change? Well, when you get the refund from that mink-lined toilet seat that your rich aunty gave you for Christmas, send the cash to these guys.

You'll feel good, the future will be a better place, and you get a cute laptop for yourself, too.

How about that?

Current-events

Love, Insanity & Hope on the Internet

How many personalities does this guy have?

George Partington: Where do you get your faith in the public and in democracy?

Chris Locke: I'm a little wary of invoking democracy maybe, but I guess that's what it is. I think that through this medium more than anything else has enabled me to connect with people. As I was saying a few minutes ago, here's EGR, this zine where I am screaming and yelling and being as nuts as I can and people are sharing with me stuff about children dying and divorces and heartbreak and joy and elation. I've had more connection with people at a human level through this medium. I just wouldn't have connected to the world in the same way. You bang around your hometown, you run into people, it's all kind of anonymous.

Something else gets surfaced in a certain kind of exchange over networks. You can look at the American public from one point of view and say, "God, they are so stupid. All these people, they're fucking sheep." And then something happens like 9-11 and some amazing heart and intelligence surfaces out of that same group of people. I think it is suppressed by broadcast. I think broadcast has been a self-fulfilling prophecy of people are sheep, if you don't tell them what to do they are not gonna....In other words, the experiment of democracy, which is few hundred years old, is still very much an experiment and it wasn't fully trusted by the founders which is why we have an electoral college for instance. It is largely not trusted. We are so far from democracy in this country. It is run by focus groups and lobbyists.

GP: That's how I feel. It would be nice if it (democracy) were tried.

CL: It would be nice if somebody tried it. And it is dangerous because... ya know power and control and command and all those things would be up for grabs. I understand the terror. On the other hand, what we've got is an oligarchy where nobody knows who is making what decisions for what reasons, and it's all in the background in closed rooms with money changing hands. I think people are capable of incredible stupidity, but at the same time there is intelligence, there's heart, there's something in people that longs for expression and connection.

GP: Well if you're honest with yourself, you know you can be pretty stupid too. You have potential for everything in there.

CL: Right. Yeah. But I think on both sides of the spectrum...we can see incredible evil from people, which we've seen recently. But there is something else. That good thing, the potential that human beings have for interest and caring and love and connection and enthusiasm. All those kinds of human qualities are not valued by corporations that value the world in terms of how much profit can we make off it.

And because they have had, up until now, control of the passes, control of what Marx called the means of communication, they could make human values appear to be trivial or non-existent. And the network is resurfacing those values in a way that corporations and the financial world cannot control. And it represents a huge challenge because, well how are we going to lock that back in and leverage that to the betterment to the brand. Well I think it is increasingly obvious to the market that that kind of manipulation is not only cynical but it is approaching...there are companies now saying now that we've all wept over terrorist events...your way of fighting terrorism is to buy a Taurus. Well that is beyond cynical. And it might have been missed in previous times. It is not gonna be missed this time around. I think people talk about that stuff and say, "Jesus Christ, this is really beyond sleazy."


Excerpted from an interview with Chris Locke, AKA "Rageboy." Said author is presently engaged in grinding out a caustic blog/book/screed attempting to get a grip on the present sad state of American culture and thought control at his entertaining, enlightening and frequently infuriating blog, Mystic Bourgeoisie.

current-events

Yesterday's Papers

Crusin' the Web

This modern technology is a wonderful thing. Thanks to any number of inventive and driven software writers and hardware makers, even the idiotic and illiterate can spew their spittle all over the world. I refer, or course, to the amazingly ignorant and misspelled posts that one finds in reply to blogs and other web sites offering anti-war (and to a surprising amount, merely factual) sentiments concerning our involvement in Iraq. A few minutes cruising the Web and reading posts/replies finds just a staggering amount of vitriol, hate, anal language and threats. Most of the posts read as if they are written by teenagers, although a few, particularly ones from persons claiming to be vets, seem to be merely victims of bad education and poor judgment. Now and then, a pro-war writer tries to be coherent, but it reads to me like an uphill battle for these authors.

Yes, I am an elitist

Of course, I speak from an elitist viewpoint, having graduated from high school. I am also a vet, from the Vietnam era with fourteen of my high school classmates dead as a result of that war, so I may be a tad prejudiced when it comes to thinking about any war, theirs or ours. But not all vets are supporting the war, of course. To think otherwise would be silly. Damn few soldiers, when in the thick of it, if offered a choice right now between shooting one more foreigner or going home, would choose to endure one more minute of the unremitting hell which is combat. They would choose to go home and screw the war. Bet on it.

Yes, here I am, safe behind the lines, feeling righteous about having done my bit and feeling safe to criticize our government's policies. That is my job, after all; I am a citizen. So I do support our troops, and I say bring them home. Screw Iraq, forget the oil, Halliburton is a fancy briefcase, Cheny isn't dead yet but tomorrow never knows, let's get the hell out of there.

Bad loser

To the world outside America, I won't say I'm sorry, but I am pissed off. Our democracy was hijacked fair and square by some pretty sharp guys. The Democratic party is burnt out as a voice of the working man, the Greens haven't found the vocabulary, the Libertarians can't endure realpolitik and the baby boomers as a group (and I speak as one) got lost in the suburbs, leaving the body politic to illiterate bubbas and corporate swine. But we did organize and get out the vote and supported our man and we registered everybody in sight! I hear you, you were magnificent. You did a great job with what you had. But what you had was not good enough. For the future, I might suggest you get somebody to run who actually stands for something. Dean as the chair of the DNC might be a good start. And while we're on the subject, how in the hell did you advisors and planners let him get trashed in Ohio? Remind me not to hire you to organize my birthday party.