Yeah that Steve Rambam talk is really good. Pretty sure that 'flying drones' thing was a joke though.

At last year's H.O.P.E., Rambam was arrested by the FBI minutes before his scheduled speech. He was completely exonerated and released within a couple days, but of course by that point it was too late for him to give his presentation. He tells the entire story behind that arrest near the end of part 2 of his speech. It's pretty obvious that the FBI did that for the specific purpose of making their own "statement" at the conference and within the community.

So this year, he was given a 3 hour time slot and he still went like 15 minutes over schedule. It's a long talk, but very very good. He really knows his stuff. Pretty scary, but it's also information everybody ought to know, if they happen to use the Internet, own a cell phone, engage in any kind of public or personal business or regularly walk or drive on public streets.

The worst part about all this is that although most of this technology is now used mostly for the purposes of marketing (in the case of Internet data mining) and law enforcement and "Homeland Security" (in the case of real-world surveillance systems), but the systems themselves don't care what purpose they're being used for. Once the systems are in place, it's no big feat to modify or adapt them for more insidious purposes. Even now, a savvy and resourceful person or group who knows these systems well could easily find ways to exploit them for their own purposes. This "'surveillance and tracking" trend is still in its infancy and though many kinds of systems are already in place right now, new ones are being developed and implemented on a daily basis.

Remember that bill which proposes to give airport security personnel the right to randomly seize and examine any digital devices including laptops and ipods, decrypt their contents and prosecute the owners according to a variety of laws, including the DMCA? Lawmakers seems to be employing a strategy of blurring the distinction between corporate interests and national security interests with this kind of crap.

My favorite quote from poor, powerless, unfairly maligned Jello Biafra:

"They're Blackwater and I'm Iraq!"


So sad.

If you go to this guy for political perspective you're in serious trouble.

Jello's segment on Obama and the democrats is worth the listen.

dontfeartheringo wrote:My favorite quote from poor, powerless, unfairly maligned Jello Biafra:

"They're Blackwater and I'm Iraq!"

The quote sounds ridiculous out of context, but his underlying point about bloggers and Internet posters was pretty valid. You have hundreds or thousands of anonymous people flinging shit at high-profile targets and in most cases their allegations are made with absolutely no proof, yet people on the Internet tend to believe it if they already have some kind of political or personal bias in that direction. If you separate the man and his personal accounts from the message, it makes sense.

Anyone who gets their political perspective solely from Jello, or bloggers, or FOX News or Infowars or 9/11 Truth or any of those clearly biased sources is in the same boat.

dontfeartheringo wrote:If you go to this guy for political perspective you're in serious trouble.

Fair enough but that doesn't render everything he says invalid.

Again, I thought his spiel regarding Myspace and the "blogosphere" was dead-on.

My grandfather often said "A stopped clock is right twice a day."

It's not that I fundamentally disagree with these crackpot types. In Mr. Jello's case, it's that he's so irredeemably smug about it, while it's clear that his comprehension of the real issues of winning an election or running a country is, as someone else said, no deeper than Bill O'Reilly's. He just happens to be shouting and throwing garbage from the same side of the street that I am on. This doesn't change the fact that he's mostly half a step up from the homeless guy walking around Haight-Ashbury chanting "monkey fucker! CIA MONKEYFUCKER! George Bush.... MONKEY FUCKER! Federal.... reserve... MONKEY! FUCKERS!!!"

I used to be deeply concerned about the mentally ill. Now I just wish they'd go get their own web forum.

But I listened patiently for some new insight until he got to the point where he was trashing Klaus Flouride. I must admit that I find it kind of objectionable that he's still fucking the corpse of his mediocre band while grinding his axe in public when his former bandmates try to make a dime off of it.

You say that that doesn't render everything he says as invalid. I dunno, to me, it really knocks him off the little high horse he's climbed up on to tell the rest of America what they were doing wrong.

It's sort of like "Dear America, everything you do is unjust. Your selfishness and abuse of power around the worl.... HEY, GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF MY MONEY!"

I agree. However, he obviously did some research for his presentation and, hyperbolic rabble-rousing aside, I felt he brought up a few good points. I am by no means a "follower" of his, and I definitely disagree with his opinion that all free-thinkers should back their own favorite losing candidates just to "send a message".

Rick Reuben wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote: the evils of medical vaccines and fluoridated water.

It's always the victims of chemically-induced brain damage who are the last to suspect it.

You left out the "money fucker" part.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote: the evils of medical vaccines and fluoridated water.

It's always the victims of chemically-induced brain damage who are the last to suspect it.

Are you insinuating that you're the only normal person in the world?

"Cookie-cutter behavior" does not need to be "assigned." It's a prominent feature of normal human society, commonly referred to as "culture".