All of the changes being pushed for are being funded by publishing organizations and the recording industry. What we are going to end up with is legislation that is completely one-sided. It will favour industry at the expense of the public. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision what this secret agreement will contain. It will make criminals of the entire population with the publishers able to extract as much money from the offenders as possible.

The reason publishers need to do this is that their traditional business model no longer stands on its own. Therefore the only way they can make money is by making the behaviour of the average citizen illegal and therefore “taxable”. The fines and levies will amount to a tax on the population meant only to help the publishers limp along, contributing nothing to society, but extracting a great deal. At least when the government taxes us, we get services in return.

Read up on these initiatives at Michael Geist’s blog. It’s a great source of information. Once you get a better idea of what’s going on. Contact your federal representative. It’s really important as our future is being shaped as we speak, behind closed doors, in blacked out documents. We deserve to have a say in our future.

An american dermatologist has fired an employee over the fact that they voted for Obama and has gone on to brag about it on a forum. This link is to a screencap since the original thread has been taken down by the host.

This is something that I thought only happened in “those” countries. You know, North Korea, Burma, China, Saudi Arabia, etc… In Canada, we believe in the freedom to vote for who you choose with no repercussions. It’s something that separates the free countries from those who are not.

This is just one incident amongst many as of late that have really been pushing the boundaries of what most of the world considers personal freedom. It seems like it’s getting really crazy down there.

We’re not angry at you, we’re not looking down at you, we’re genuinely concerned about you. We know that you can heal and put things like this behind you. We want you to get well soon.

The only way to deal with these people is to stop using their name out loud and pay no attention to them whatsoever. There are many, many authors out there who write things that would anger many Canadians but because they’re not popular enough, we don’t hear about them and it doesn’t affect us. Treat these people the way you treat trolls on the Internet. Ignore them and they go away.

Politicians in the US were left scrambling to explain why these situations, which sounded like, smelled like and looked like terrorist acts, were not in fact terrorist acts. They were all pretty difficult to understand and a lot of the things they said Reese Erlich has explained it clearly so that we can all understand.

So he’s cleared it up to explain that right-wing white people don’t commit terrorist acts, only middle-eastern muslims do. Which immediately brought to mind the DC sniper attacks. I remember being really surprised that nobody was using the T-word through the weeks when these guys had people in DC so terrified that they either drove miles and miles out of their way to gas up or they scrambled to the site of a recent shooting to gas up because it would now be crawling with cops. To me, the level of terror within the population seemed to suggest that they were being terrorized, possibly by a terrorist. You see this one was tricky, they were both muslim, but one of them was American and the other Jamaican. Since there was no middle-eastern link, the US media chose to stay away from branding these two terrorists.

So why be so picky about which to call terrorists and which not? Well the word terrorist is meant to help Americans understand who they should be afraid of. Should you be afraid of the white guy next door who hates the government, thinks they’re out to get him and has more guns and ammo in his shed than he could possibly shoot in a lifetime even if he fired non-stop starting today? No, he’s probably fine. Just a colourful character. Should you fear a man thousands of miles away who just had his family killed by an errant US drone attack and is swearing that he wants justice on TV? You betcha! This guy is probably at the airport right now trying to buy a flight to your house where he plans on killing you and everyone you love.

So there you go. That should help you understand why the US government calls some people terrorists and not others. It’s really all in a bid to help you figure out who you should be watching out for. Because if they don’t tell you who you should be afraid of, how else would you know?

In last night’s state of the Union Obama said:

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why – for the first time in history – my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

Just one problem. He has roughly twelve such individuals in policy making positions. Here’s some more details on it from Polifact, a pretty neutral source.

Breaking a campaign trail promise isn’t that big a deal. It’s unfortunately an understanding between voters and politicians that they can really only be held to about 50% of what they say while they’re campaigning. But to stand there during the state of the union and lie to everyone in the US and the rest of the world is a whole other thing. I mean especially where anyone with an internet connection and half a brain can go find out that you’re lying through you’re teeth…

The world had hoped for better for the US, but it looks like they have exactly what they used to have. Politicians that are bought and paid for by the companies that run the country. From the bottom all the way to the very top.

This story should be huge news. It should be plastered across every US newspaper and every news channel, but it’s not.

Why?

They don’t care.

It’s just that simple. The US government has convinced its people over the past many years that it’s ok to torture people if they’re terrorists. Then it’s just a hop skip and a jump to convince them that all the people you’ve captured are terrorists and you can not just get away with murder, you can torture those poor souls all the way to the end. With greater than 50% of US citizens being ok with torture and over 50% of US citizens being ok with giving up civil liberties to “make them safer”, this story will never make it past the increasingly small group of Americans who actually know how to read. This story won’t be on VH1, won’t be on Oprah and won’t get a mention at the Superbowl. Even if it would, they would simply change the channel because they’re just not interested.

The United States has become a more frightening place to me than North Korea and Iran combined. All due to apathy. The people who live in America haven’t asked their leaders to go and torture people to death, but by not even raising an eyebrow when they find out that it’s happened, they may as well have asked in writing with their signature at the bottom.