SOPA Sucks

My day started off like every other day. I sat down and, after reading and responding to my emails, got to work. My first assignment led me to Wikipedia, where a large banner appeared at the top of the page stating that in less than one hour the site was going to blackout for 24 hours in protest to the latest efforts to push SOPA through. Previous to that moment, I naively thought that was one battle we had won. I was wrong.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. That's horse crappe and everyone knows it. It is a bill specifically designed to Stop Online Freedom and should be named as such. Like the NDAA, it is a bill designed to shut us up and allow the Powers That Be do exactly what they want to do, which is increase their already overweening power and wealth.

To my utter amazement, there are actually a lot of people in power who support this bill. To find out which of your braindead-except-for-the-selfish-paranoid-and-evil-parts US congressmen support it, check out this article: SOPA Opera.

If you think that resistance to this bill and its cousin, PIPA, is limited to fringe dwellers like yours truly, think again. Remember, I mentioned that Wikipedia was against it. Google and other big-shots are also opposed to it and are taking measures to bring public attention to this important issue and away from their already censored and propaganda laden TV sets. In fact, the List of Sites Planning SOPA Protests is up to around 7000 and continuing to grow.

What can us nobody's do about it? Well, I've taken a considerable chunk of my working day off to post as much information as I can on social media sites and even sent a tweet to Barack Obama telling him his career was over if he passed the bill. Knowing the stupidity of the American people, that may not happen or they may decide to elect someone equally or even more opposed to free speech and human rights, but at least I expressed my opinion. Lucky I don't live in the US, because I suppose that rash action might be considered a threatened act of terrorism.

I just want to add that Max Keiser talked about SOPA on his Keiser Report on RT. I watch his show and the news on my normal TV here in Cambodia and take it for granted that it is freely available to anybody, but I think I'm wrong. Can you watch it on cable TV in America? Do you watch alternative news in America? I didn't think so. I don't think the RT websites will be entirely shut down with the passing of SOPA, but they'll be a lot harder to access. The whole thrust of the bill (and PIPA) is to make the internet like NBC et al: filtered propaganda for the masses.

I may be wrong, but I think some of the urgency may have to do with the planned war of aggression against Iran. Your Ministry of Disinformation is already spewing out stories of the Iranian nuclear threat. Well, there is no threat. The proof is right here in this PDF, Iran Has a Nuclear Power, not a Weapons Program. Personally, I wouldn't blame them if they did have a nuclear weapons program, given the fact that the US and Israel have nuclear weapons pointed straight at them, but that's beside the point. This is the kind of content that won't be available to you if and when SOPA and similar bills pass.

Please, people, wake up to what's going on. You can't be THAT stupid. Or can you?