Smash the state: sell your guns and buy a computer

[plagueship]

i'm sorry but if you think wikileaks caused the revolts in the mideast, you are simply not paying attention or checking your background info, at all. these events were brought on by a rise in food costs which was in turn linked to the global financial crisis which began in 2007. wikileaks, twitter and etc may have facilitated these events but to say that "Just a few of those cables changed the political landscape" is very mistaken. widespread unemployment and the inability of many people to feed themselves on a basic paycheck/welfare budget was the cause of the revolts, as usual, not some sense of political idealism which middle class, college educated activists (in egypt or in the u.s. or wherever) would like to ascribe to it. even if wikileaks got to play paul revere it wasn't the real issue.

 

[Wolf]

Kind of a contradiction there. If you're an anarchist you probably think that any power is subject to abuse no matter who wields it and so you basically seek to be powerless.* But to get that done you have to overpower someone who is trying to overpower you.

It's weird.

*Caveat: officially powerless. Even the lowliest beggar can still be an asshole on a personal level.

Wait a second now. This is where people make a huge mistake. There is a fight between ultimate oppression and an attempt at freedom. There is nothing wrong, or even hypocritical about fighting oppressive powers. Now if we were actually in an anarchist state and a group of people tried to over throw a group of other people whos personal regulations where not harming other humans in any meaningful kind of way, that would be one thing. However, we are not in an anarchistic state so this can not be the case, therefore all means necessary still applies. We are given two choices by force. Either we sit idly by, or we don't. There is no real gray area.

 

[viking]

Cryptography will become obsolete soon due to quantum computers, sadly.

 

[RnJ]

Menyun, the masters would make sure that bit of doctor knowledge would sell for something you could never afford. And you'd get a hacked version, and they'd spend their eMoney paying people to get you in trouble for it. Typical.

 

[RnJ]

Power is the ability to affect change, to whatever degree one can. In a non-statist communitarian ideal world, we still have the ability to affect changes, and more importantly, we hold that power together. If we were every truly powerless, we couldn't do a single thing out of our own will. We'd merely be the puppets of destiny.

"POWER: ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something." (dictionary.reference.com)

I guess I'm looking at power more in depth here. Generally in conversation, I'd say that power corrupts, but what I'd really be meaning is that someone having an excess of power over others is problematic, not that the ability to make some sort of change in your environment or community, or influence people in some way is bad.