Why are do gooders so easily duped?? And what does it say about the manipulators that manage to get all these followers??

And at some point it will snap and lead to an upheaval unprecedented in over 200 years..

The latest attempts of the US Gubment to stretch their reach far beyond it’s bounds has now reached to Japanese TV.. It seems that the ATF is upset about a beer commercial.. bostonherald.com.. Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is shown taking a drink of what appears to be a tastey beer after throwing a pitch in uniform.. Apparently the actof a sports personality converts skulls of mush into raving alchoholics at the meer sight of such an action.. And the ATF must protect us..

I am actually quite conservative in my beliefs.. But there has to be a line drawn at some point.. And the Feds trying to Japanese people what they can see on TV seems to be a little out of their reach to me.. So what to do?? I don’t know, but I don’t see any currently electable people capable of making things better.. No Republicans, no Democrats.. Each party is simply the other side of the power trip coin.. Each more interested in staying power than actually accomplishing anything useful to the world as a whole.

Looks like it’s time to get involved making phone calls and writing letters again.. Why not start here with the ATF email address.. eps@atf.gov.. Or you can write you US Representative here at http://www.house.gov/writerep/ or your sentator here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Feel free to copy and paste this message to your own reps..

I’m writing to express my concern that agencies of the US government seem to have lost their focus on exactly what their roles are. Specifically I am referring the ATF spending resources looking in to whether they can apply US law to Japanese television.

Apparently they are concerned that a Japanese man, who happens to play baseball here in the summer, dared to commit the grievous act of actually drinking a beer in a television commercial. I am stunned that with all of the things the ATF is responsible for, with all of the resources at their disposal to protect the US and enforce our laws, they have the time to watch Japanese TV looking for more crime to chase after.

It seems to me that what the Japanese do with their television programs has little effect on the citizens of the United States, and that declaring “Matsuzaka’s Asahi ad may merit punitive action” simply leads to yet another black hole of both resources and international opinion towards the US.

While I am sure that you have little direct control of the day to day operations of the ATF, I feel that it is important that the members of the US congress hear the voices of their constituents on issues that affect us both nationally and internationally. And if my opinions can help you find a voice to bring this issue further light, and hopefully convince the ATF to spend more of their time worrying about things at home, then perhaps something good can come of this.

Thank you for you time.

Oh yeah, here is the scarey commercial that will lead us all to damnation..

Let me start of by saying up front that I am apparently a political opposite to the points of view raised in this book.. I really tried to read this with an open mind, but the writing is so dry and stilted that I simply couldn’t get in to the philosophies being presented.. It felt like reading Decline and Fall.. Only without the love and craftsmanship.. At least when you finish reading Decline and Fall you feel a sense of accomplishment.. After reading A Hacker Manifesto I felt robbed of my time..

Mackenzie Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto tries to present the hacker as the driving force, and real power of civilization.. He declares the hacker, whether he is a scientist, artist, or programmer, as the only true creator.. Everyone else is either a user or used.. With the hacker falling somewhere in the middle bridging the gap between classes..

The whole time I was reading this book I kept waiting for a revelation.. Something new.. But it just doesn’t happen.. A Hacker Manifesto reads like Marxism 2.0.. It’s the same old idea wrapped in modern trends and job classes.. It subtly paints the capitalist class as the oppressive users of the labor classes and portrays the hacker class as the salvation for everyone.. It’s too black and white, too obvious, of a philosophy to be of any real use for anyone that has even a basic understanding of Marxism and Communism.. And the whole time I was reading it I got this subtle feeling that the author was really writing a “look at me, I’m smart” book.. I’m sure that others will disagree, but I just see nothing groundbreaking in this book.. If you want to good book on Communism, go to some original sources and read Trotsky or Lenin.. If nothing else they are a better read..

Cue the Rockwell video..

A little background before we start.. I am a partner at ForTheWeb.com, but I also own my own design studio (no website - gasp) and do jewelry / CAD design over at Images Jewelers..

I came back from lunch today to my office at Images to see some mail sitting on my desk.. It’s addressed to our PO Box in San Jose for ForTheWeb.. My office at Images is in Elkhart, Indiana.. Now I have to ask you, why would a mailman in Elkhart, IN., know to deliver a letter addressed to ForTheWeb in San Jose, CA.?? And when he made that delivery, didn’t he think it was a bit strange that it didn’t even have my name on it, just ForTheWeb??

I’ve had neighbor’s mail misdelivered, I’ve had mail totally unrelated to me misdelivered.. But what are the odds that a misdelivery in Indiana would find the one person here that would know where the mail “should” have gone??

I think I need a new tin foil hat.. This one doesn’t seem to be working any more..

~Feydakin

Breaking news tells that London based British Petroleum is closing down the Alaskan Pipeline and the Prudhoe Bay Oil fields to repair a leak in the pipeline.. Leaks happen, I understand that, and in the grand scheme of things the Alaskan oil fields only produce about 8% of the US domestic oil so it ’shouldn’t’ affect price very much.. But it will as even more profit taking happens.. This really isn’t the issue for me..

My concern is that foreign based and owned companies are now purchasing significant amounts of US based infrastructure.. From oil pipelines to toll roads.. Where I live we have a group from Austrailia and Spain purchasing the Toll Road near me.. They are paying a one time lease fee of 72 billion dollars.. That’s $72,000,000,000 dollars.. And they get all the tolls collected over the next 75 years.. It sure is a quick hit in the pocket for the state, especially when they say that the toll road has been loosing money for a while now.. But this company has projected that they will project some 160 billion dollars over the 75 years from this deal.. now, how can they make money when local government can’t??

And then we had the sale of major US ports happening that involved a company from the middle east.. What an uproar that caused.. And it got stopped.. Even though a Chinese company is already involved in the ports and we don’t actually own them right now anyway..

This trend bothers me for several reasons.. The first is pure nationalism.. Here we are, handing control of potentially important national infrastructure to companies in pther parts of the world.. How are we supposed to maintain control?? What if that current friendly becomes a hostile later?? Like today’s announcement of the pipline closure.. How is letting a company based in London control 8% of the US oil suppoly a good thing?? And even more importantly, this same company already has a history of spills and non-compliance.. Why do they still control it??

But, as important as this is, what really bothers me most is that total lack of competence of our own governement.. Here is a group that says that they can’t break even be providing basic services (roads etc) to the nation, yet a foreign company can turn a rather healthy profit from that exact same deal?? If you can’t provide these services, what good are you??

~Fey

Last week a report on CNN stated that a Chinese citizen was arrested, convicted, and jailed for four years for “incitement to subvert state power”.. This in itself is nothing new.. What is new is that a US based search engine company has been named in court documents as providing evidence that helped convict the “dissident”..

But it wasn’t Google.. It was Yahoo.. And this isn’t the first time that Yahoo has helped to jail a political activist in China.. This is the fourth to be documented.. Apparently Wang Xiaoning created a Yahoo Group called aaabbbccc helped lead to his conviction..

While I find the entire situation unnerving in this day and age, what I find even more telling is the total lack of response from the activists here in the states.. Where ar the people that were protesting Google’s agreement to censor data from their search results for Chinese citizens?? Where are the vehement forum postings about Google doing “no evil”?? Why are these people silent??

My guess, Yahoo isn’t the media darling that Google is and therefore isn’t a worthy target.. Why go after a company that won’t get you on the front page for a real political crime when you can get all sorts of air time by going after someone that is popular right now?? Is it a double standrad for the activists to behave this way?? Or is this normal behavior for many of them?? The “I only protest when I can be seen on TV” activist?? Or more likely, it’s not about forcing real change, but doing what makes them feel good about themselves for the moment..

Fey~