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Showing posts tagged freedom
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America - Fuck Yeah?
Do I really have to indicate whether the video linked in the title is NSFW? No. I don’t. BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA!!!! Hmmm. Wait, I guess because of that very fact, I should let you know it’s NSFW or you’ll get all pissy pants over it and wah-wah-wah you may want to ban it to protect your fellow Americans from it.
Watching something inappropriate or sexually suggestive could cause people to think things you don’t want them to think! But that’s what we’re over there somewhere fighting for! Fighting people who like to ban things so we have the freedom to ban things we don’t like back home! AMERICA!! Right??
I’d point out on the globe where it is our blessed boys and girls are fighting but I didn’t take no geography classes at the learning place with all the books and shit. That’s for all the eggheads to work out. I just earn my wages and wave my flag! You gotta love the flag! YOU GOTTA!! OR YOU’RE A COMMIE!! OR A LIBERAL! OR A NAZI! OR A SOCIALIST! OR A FASCIST!! Don’t even think about it, buster. Just LOVE. THAT. FLAG! Hey, I said stop thinking.
We’re spilling blood there so we can spill oil here, mofos!! And while we’re on the topic, what’s with all the BP bashing? It’s cause of all those environmental things and them safeguards that they had to find ways to work around and escape so many environmental things and safeguards!! We wouldn’t have no spill if it wasn’t for all those things and rules! You know what I’m saying?? Or are you one of those soccer playing health care loving pansies?
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Sorry about all that, folks. I felt the need to mock the incoherent conversations and thoughtless jingoism that we are eternally plagued with in public forums, both in and out of cyberspace. I would have written it with even more grammatical errors, excess capitalization and contradictions but I thought you deserved a break on this holiday weekend from such things. It’s the kind of stuff that failbook.com is full of, isn’t it? It is also the kind of material in letters to my newspaper that I am forced to only shake my head at and then place on a page anyway. We certainly all have the freedom to be ignorant and hateful, don’t we? Yes.
One of the things that unfortunately comes with reuniting with old grade school and high school friends on facebook is discovering that they’re bible thumpin’, flag salutin’, love it or leave it, Obama hatin’ idiots unable to converse reasonably with you on current events… the kind of people that write those letters I mentioned above… They’re of course just like the thousands of other people a veteran netizen will have crossed keyboards with over the last couple decades. I recoil at all their country music-based patriotism, bumper sticker quotes and imperative calls for worshiping the red, white and blue. I’m often surprised when they are educated individuals whose possession of a degree seems to contradict their lack of understanding that the world isn’t a black and white place.
They’re not alone of course. The country is full of people who are really incapable of fully appreciating all the import, wisdom and philosophies inherent in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and related documents. Unfortunately, those morons continually evoke the name of those documents and their authors to effect contradictory actions.
I guess I tolerate such peoople on facebook and elsewhere (with one or two exceptions) for the sake of common friendships, shared memories, evoking smiles and laughs and for the fact that they may have at one time or another positivley influenced who I am in some manner.
You see, all that leads me to realize that I guess I suffer fools for various reasons and I’m sure you do too, despite a strong inclination to wall myself off from the mentally incontinent. I don’t want to tolerate them… but I guess I do. You do too at the dinner table and in your office at work.
I write this today, July 4, because I too want to celebrate the possibilities, opportunities, philosophies and principles that come with being a citizen in this nation. I want to feel as joyful about America as those numbnuts above seem to. Now, no one is physically stopping me, of course. It’s simply that the apparent epidemic of anti-intellectualism and lazy-mindedness that so often is wrapped up in a flag leaves me a bit self-conscious and pensive on each Independence Day. I’ve invisible shackles of my own making that slightly restrict my baton twirling, flag hoisting and red, white and blue face painting.
I like the ole red, white and blue too but I see so many gray areas in there that I just can’t ignore. I see lots of stains and worn patches that need mending and cleaning, but those who wave the flag most fervently and claim to protect it are often the ones most blind to the condition it is in.
I wish those whose blind patriotism, moronic viewpoints and lack of thought I tolerate could extend to me and so many others a similar courtesy in regard to differing opinions and different ways of being. If they did, then you might be more likely to see me standing next to them waving a flag while singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
Until then, I guess it’s safe to say I’m more in love with what America can be than what it currently is. I’m too bothered by those people who “don’t like the direction this country is going”. They are the citizens who are ironically most in the way of it going anywhere positive at all.
Lots of Americans will fly, buy or pass a flag, put on flag-pattterned swim trunks, eat hot dogs with a flag stuck in them or watch red, white and blue fireworks tonight, and that’s all good stuff. I like hot dogs and I like fireworks. I just wish mindless revelers would put more energy into better understanding what it is they’re saluting. The principles and philosophies behind our flag and the words of the Founding Fathers are so much more awesome than most Americans understand. Very often it is foreigners who can see better than some U.S. citizens the great privileges of being an American.
In closing, here’s a prayer of sorts. FSM bless America, but while you’re at it, could you please use your noodly appendages to open the minds of the people around me a bit more? I’d appreciate it. Cram some intellect in there, please? Until that happens, July 4 will always hold a touch of melancholy for me.
Happy 4th anyway, my friends. Here’s to more reasons to celebrate in the future. Hope I haven’t bummed you out like a dud firecracker.
Books!! FUCK YEAH!
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ProPublica Photographer: I Was Followed by BP Security and Then Detained by Police
To summarize:
- A photographer took these photos of a BP oil refinery while standing on the grass median of a public road. (With very few exceptions, it’s perfectly legal to take pictures of anything visible from a public place, even if the subject is privately owned.)
- BP’s security noticed, called the city police, and followed him by car to a gas station.
- The police forcefully detained, harassed, and threatened him for more than 20 minutes for something that is not a crime and that they did not witness.
- The police disclosed all of his personal information, including his Social Security number, to a BP security guard.
- The police effectively forced him to reveal the photos he had taken and continued to detain, harass, and threaten him even after an officer had evaluated them and decided that they were not a threat to Homeland “Security”.
- He was further detained, harassed, and threatened by a Homeland Security agent who arrived at the scene and forced him to reveal the publication he was working for.
There’s a good chance that a crime was committed there, but not by the photographer.
Is there any doubt who’s running our country?
No doubt here.
So stupid. It also bothers me so much that the cops in these situations do not stop and think for ONE. FREAKIN. SECOND. about the legality of what they’re doing. They’ve been muscled, figuratively, by someone above them (and so on up) so they become jerks, drop all objections and muscle someone else, literally. You can not successfully speak to the officers in this situation and demand they recognize the fact that nothing illegal has transpired because it becomes an ego-bruising challenge to their authority, even if you’re correct, and you are therefore obstructing, resisting etc. They don’t want to hear your ACLU-egghead-hippy talk.
Many a photographer in Europe has suffered these same intimidations and abuses over the last decade. Some have begun carrying copies of the legal code that protects their rights but I assume that still doesn’t go over well. Many stories reside on flickr.com of this nature.
As a collective pool of photographers, from tourist to amateur to news gatherer to professional artist, we certainly need to not be swayed from what is our legal right to photograph monuments, public venues, events, law enforcement installations, officers and their actions and more. We’re at the front line of a battle to preserve our freedoms in the face of thuggery by corporations and kowtowing law enforcement that is obviously failing to serve and protect. Every incident where a photographer is barred or harassed should be made public in one manner or another.
What the hell does BP expect to achieve? They can’t block the entire freaking gulf coast from being photographed. Why is local/federal law authority so willing to let them magically become ruler of the seas and land that they don’t even own? Must be some promises of campaign contributions being made in the right pockets. Disgusting.
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These are the only words out of D.C. that matter today. The rest is fear-based bullshit fed to reactionary self-deluded idiots, engineered to fill the wallets of people who have never, ever suffered the way members of minorities and impoverished families have in America and around the globe. Instead of stoking anger and convincing the privileged that monsters are at the gates, Dr. King called out our country for its faults and the hate it harbored then reminded its citizens of the beautiful, just and free future it could have through the pursuit of unity, equality and peace. Honor will only be ‘restored’ when Dr. King’s dream is more fully realized and Americans remember freedom is not real if it is only doled out to a certain few instead of shared by all.
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This is fantastic news.
Bravo to New York State for further securing basic human rights for all its citizens.
I congratulate those who can now legally marry in my state and enjoy the privileges that go along with that.
To all those who voted against it, protested or refuse to accept it, enjoy your stay in the past. I hope no one’s prejudice ever compromises your civil rights.
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Secular victory: Religious groups must offer birth control - Portland Humanist | Examiner.com
Yay! Let’s tax the bastards next.
Preaching to the choir here…. The religious types fear true freedom because they’re afraid other people will make choices that they don’t like. Cultural and moral relativism is evil incarnate in their view. They also don’t trust that they themselves will always be ‘delivered from temptation’ (because obviously they aren’t responsible for their own desires and are subject to the influence of others). Therefore it is better to remove any opportunity to choose and simultaneously chalk it up to the supposed dictates of their lord. Despite the supposed gift of free will from their god, it’s better that there be no opportunity to sin rather than there even be the slightest opportunity to choose not to sin.
A reading from the book of Kevbo.
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10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the U.S. Is Nuts
Great piece by Soraya Chemaly. Women are not cows and pigs! Everyone should read it.
Likes
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Despite your feelings regarding Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, this little...
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PEEEEEEEEEEEGS!
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i'm so fucking confident with no hair.
i want to have nude portraits taken of me, sexual or...
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And so begins the 3-5 month stretch that I don’t wear clothes.
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