Cheers for the interjection. I always appreciate a well-formed argument that challenges my beliefs.

I wasn't aware of the exposure of undercover agents. That does at least partly counter my first point. I do still think the public interest aspect is very significant, although as I'm not American I see it more from more of a global point of view.

As for the second point, I was referring to the statements in the video, specifically its 'leveraging of anti-Trump sentiment', rather than the prosecution itself.

I still believe that my general point holds: that the statements in the video are generally correct, and that the approach the US has taken (under both Trump and Obama) will have - and is designed to have - a chilling effect on the publishing of information that shows the state acting in what many would describe as an evil manner.

Hedges' latest article on surveillance and snitches includes pure gold in the form of Solzhenitsyn quotes.

It's been 12 years since I read the Gulag Archipelago and I haven't spent a single thought on it throughout this entire chain of surveillance revelations. The corrosive effect permanent surveillance has on you - the stool pigeons are a wonderful illustration of it.
Even those who acknowledge the chilling effect often qualify it as less corrosive than full-blown "Zersetzung", as if there were a clear-cut line between the two. Dragnet surveillance is Zersetzung.

Anyway, loved this one:

A remarkable fresh breeze was blowing! On the surface we were prisoners living in a camp just as before, but in reality we had become free—free because for the very first time in our lives we had started saying openly and aloud all that we thought! No one who has not experienced this transition can imagine what it is like!

And the informers … stopped informing.

On the subject of feces, I am reminded of an aspect of the Uygur/Harris debate that I wanted to pick up.

As they were discussing torture, Harris was rather convinced of his understanding that death would be worse than having your holy book mistreated or being sprayed with (fake) menstrual blood.

This fails to appreciate a major drive behind the use of torture: to "reset" a human mind, to have the subject betray whatever is most sacred to him/her. The torture at Gitmo/Baghram was directly aimed at one of the most defining aspects of their victims' personalities, namely their religious beliefs.

All of this was beautifully illustrated in Southern America when the torturers' aim was to completely negate the societies' strong sense of solidarity by forcing selected people to betray one another, by putting them into either-you-or-them situations. As horrible as death is, to have the core of your very being negated by force is, in fact, worse for quite a significant percentage of people, as proven by those who would rather endure torture/death than deny what made them human.

They manage to wipe a human's mind alright, as you can see by the mindless husks in those torture camps that were once human beings. And by setting them up as examples, entire societies are reprogrammed.

The more "civilised" version of it would be the treatment of whistleblowers. It sends ripples through society, just like its uglier cousin, inducing a chilling effect that I would at some point love to see quantified.

The industrial age is part of 'economic liberty'.

People were free to make inventions that use coal, or use oil, and were free to market them either as products or services.

That differs from the earlier times/case where folks were obligated to participate only in activities sanctioned by their local lords. Often where they couldn't even travel freely.

Much of the math and chemistry we have comes from centuries worth of largely superfluous [essentially hobbyist at the time] higher education of the privileged classes. (eg. Boyle's/Charles' laws being a foundation of modern internal combustion engines, not used in said form for centuries after written down).

(Note : Which still continues to be the case, what we come up with in a purely theoretical form today, ends up being used in practical application much later. Although maybe it's speeding up. eg. Relativity is used in making GPS work, and that time delta isn't quote as large.)

Once the idea of economic liberty took hold, and people were free to come up with ideas that use the universes natural/physical properties to replace 'manpower', you had the industrial revolution.



The 'honor' part plays a good role too. You can witness this still being an issue today.
You can go to parts of eastern Europe, and talk with people about jobs and respectability.

There are plenty of places where a laborer is scum, and a businessman (eg. owner, who does not himself work, but has people working for him) is highly respected.
In these places, you don't see much work getting done, as a large portion of the typical western service sectors just doesn't exist.
For example, there are ~no house painters. Showing up with paint buckets and overalls would just get you strange stares and mumbles from people around you, and parents would be saying to their kids "See, this is what happens if you don't get good grades".
If you want your house painted, you gotta do it yourself. Few self respecting people are willing to do that job.
In contrast, ask people around the U.S. about who painted their house. Odds are, they hired for it.

The effects on small business are visible too. Lots of shops, the moment the owner can afford to not come in himself, that's exactly what they do.
And on top of that, they take every chance they can get to point out to folks that 'they don't work anymore - people work for them'.

It's a culture where the people responsible for productivity are looked down on, and it has a chilling effect on productivity.

-scheherazade

Why do they hate Family Guy?

And why is it only Muslims who still get upset enough at irreverent media to seriously deter its production with predictable threats of violence? To hell with all chilling effects and censorship based on outrage based on bronze age myths. Every threat against a speaker should and usually does spawn dozens more like him in solidarity with the threatened speaker. On the internet this is known as the Streisand effect and it's pretty much inevitable. The assholes making death threats against cartoonists are way behind the times. "Islamophobia" acquiring the opprobrium of racism is absurd. Religion is a choice like becoming a member of the asshole tea party, not something unchangeable that you're born with like skin color. One might as well coin a term "Republicanophobia" and apply it to any harsh critic of the Republican party. All religions are rotten to the core just as all major parties are rotten to the core. But some religions are worse than others and some parties are worse than others, notwithstanding individual variability.

Well to a large extent I agree with you. You shouldn't not do something for fear of maybe someone getting their feelings hurt or whatever, that's like the Chilling Effect, but I would argue that in this particular instance there was nothing to be gained from it other than misery. What were they really hoping for? They're fucking morons is what they are.

This is bullshit. The poll asked people whether Citizens United would lead to corruption. It did not ask whether Citizens United was incorrectly decided. But Thinkprogress somehow infers that the poll indicates widespread agreement that the judges' reasoning was "bizarre". It indicates nothing of the sort.

It's true that the majority opinion says that the ruling will not lead to corruption, and they're probably wrong about this (or working with a highly constrained notion of corruption). But this is an incidental statement. They make it explicit that the ruling does not hinge on this: "Limits on independent expenditures... have a chilling effect extending well beyond the Government’s interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption. The anticorruption interest is not sufficient to displace the speech here in question."

So Milhiser is completely wrong when he suggests that disagreement with the justices on this point entails disagreement with the ruling. It is entirely possible to believe that the ruling will in fact make the system more corrupt while still believing that it is the correct ruling on purely legal grounds. That's my position, and the position of a number of other people on the left.

Also, note that only 69% of people polled agreed with the claim about increased corruption. That means 31% either disagreed with the claim or were not sure about it. Somehow this shows that the ruling is less popular than witchcraft. That Thinkprogress blog post is ridiculous.

Your car analogy is accurate, but misleading. If the car were newer, then it would in fact be against patent law to make one on your own. The SCO case is, I believe, patent law, not copyright.

I don't get your argument regarding publishing companies of various kinds trying to make money for themselves and not paying artists much. This is the old "artists deserve more money" argument. Frankly, they don't. And I'm saying that as an artist. If you're an artist and you give someone your art in exchange for whatever percentage, then you've agreed to that amount and you deserve that amount, and no more. The fact is, selling art is hard. It might not seem that way because we see it everywhere, but having art sitting in your house or on your computer and making money off of it is just plain difficult. The easiest route is frequently to let someone else do that for you, and to artists who can't afford a cup of coffee, making some decent cash sounds like a good deal.

Artists who don't want to go that route are free to keep their content and sell it themselves.
>> ^Porksandwich:

I like to try to apply things to real life objects or processes instead of digital.
You can make an exact replica of a 1950s car (legal), but if you copy a PICTURE someone else took of a 1950s car you're in trouble (illegal). Or if you take the picture of a 1950s car (legal), the owner who spent all the time and effort on it is SOL if you just snap a picture of it and make a million bucks----but if it were a painting they painted and you took a picture of it to sell..they'd have you by your balls in court.
It's even confusing in the tangible world, but in general copyright is not used like a club to keep other people from producing things in the tangible world.
In the digital world, copyright is hard to enforce but it's more "chilling effect" is it being used like a club to take down things that might even remotely be related to their copyrights...whether or not it can be demonstrated or proven. Look at SCO over Linux, they have lost but they still have that whole case showing up in court even now...it took YEARS to get it settled and it's back in some form from what I read elsewhere. Youtube is full of examples of it being used to remove content that is not theirs.....they took down the music video MegaUpload guys paid for and put up using DMCA knowing it wasn't theirs because they "had an arrangement with Google/Youtube to be able to do so".
Tangible world of copyright has some sense of "reasonable expectation" when it comes to decisions and such.
Intangible world of copyright has no "reason" applied to it at any stage, it doesn't make sense to anyone. It's abused, the courts even allow it's abuse to go unpunished because THEY do even know WTF is going on with it. It's a crazy mess of finger pointing, denying access to distribution channels people want to be able to get content on (EA and Steam is a great example of this), price fixing (Publishers conspiring with Apple to price fix Ebooks to Apple pricing, Amazon is balking at this as are a lot of people), etc.
Hell the publishers are using copyrights and agreements as ways to lock in authors to prevent them from publishing themselves and are purposefully screwing with digital ebook sites to make it uncertain for non-affiliated authors. And it's not working for them as more and more authors are going self-published, BUT no one steps in and tells them to cut that shit out. The New York Times Bestseller lists won't even put Self-Pubbed author titles on their listing, even if they are best sellers. It's just another aspect of the digital world being treated like it's tangible and slow moving, the publishers are using their clout to try to force people into their "idea" of what it should all be...slow and expensive, with content creators getting less than 15% of the final sale price in most cases.
Corporate establishments should not be dictating policy.... they shouldn't be able to force distribution channels offline (netflix comes to mind, Amazon Kindle titles, etc) by dictating or forcing it to be unreasonably costly/restrictive in comparison to their own services (Hulu, Apple Ebooks, etc). They are forcibly carving a spot for themselves into the contracts and agreements, despite what's best for consumers and content creators and getting additional laws/policy to enforce it.
On the other side of dictating policy, we have corporations pushing to take away restrictive policies when it hurts their profits. And we end up with the housing bubble and economic crisis......
Laws and policy should be written with the people in mind first, society second, anything else, and corporations last. Corporations should be adapting to the will of the people and the laws of the society that reinforce their will, not telling everyone how it's going to be.

I like to try to apply things to real life objects or processes instead of digital.

You can make an exact replica of a 1950s car (legal), but if you copy a PICTURE someone else took of a 1950s car you're in trouble (illegal). Or if you take the picture of a 1950s car (legal), the owner who spent all the time and effort on it is SOL if you just snap a picture of it and make a million bucks----but if it were a painting they painted and you took a picture of it to sell..they'd have you by your balls in court.

It's even confusing in the tangible world, but in general copyright is not used like a club to keep other people from producing things in the tangible world.

In the digital world, copyright is hard to enforce but it's more "chilling effect" is it being used like a club to take down things that might even remotely be related to their copyrights...whether or not it can be demonstrated or proven. Look at SCO over Linux, they have lost but they still have that whole case showing up in court even now...it took YEARS to get it settled and it's back in some form from what I read elsewhere. Youtube is full of examples of it being used to remove content that is not theirs.....they took down the music video MegaUpload guys paid for and put up using DMCA knowing it wasn't theirs because they "had an arrangement with Google/Youtube to be able to do so".

Tangible world of copyright has some sense of "reasonable expectation" when it comes to decisions and such.

Intangible world of copyright has no "reason" applied to it at any stage, it doesn't make sense to anyone. It's abused, the courts even allow it's abuse to go unpunished because THEY do even know WTF is going on with it. It's a crazy mess of finger pointing, denying access to distribution channels people want to be able to get content on (EA and Steam is a great example of this), price fixing (Publishers conspiring with Apple to price fix Ebooks to Apple pricing, Amazon is balking at this as are a lot of people), etc.

Hell the publishers are using copyrights and agreements as ways to lock in authors to prevent them from publishing themselves and are purposefully screwing with digital ebook sites to make it uncertain for non-affiliated authors. And it's not working for them as more and more authors are going self-published, BUT no one steps in and tells them to cut that shit out. The New York Times Bestseller lists won't even put Self-Pubbed author titles on their listing, even if they are best sellers. It's just another aspect of the digital world being treated like it's tangible and slow moving, the publishers are using their clout to try to force people into their "idea" of what it should all be...slow and expensive, with content creators getting less than 15% of the final sale price in most cases.

Corporate establishments should not be dictating policy.... they shouldn't be able to force distribution channels offline (netflix comes to mind, Amazon Kindle titles, etc) by dictating or forcing it to be unreasonably costly/restrictive in comparison to their own services (Hulu, Apple Ebooks, etc). They are forcibly carving a spot for themselves into the contracts and agreements, despite what's best for consumers and content creators and getting additional laws/policy to enforce it.

On the other side of dictating policy, we have corporations pushing to take away restrictive policies when it hurts their profits. And we end up with the housing bubble and economic crisis......

Laws and policy should be written with the people in mind first, society second, anything else, and corporations last. Corporations should be adapting to the will of the people and the laws of the society that reinforce their will, not telling everyone how it's going to be.

So far I am less addicted to Skyrim than I was to Oblivion and I think there's primarily two reasons.

First is that I know what sort of thing to expect in Skyrim as the style of TES games doesn't really change. I know what's going to happen when I stumble upon a daedric shrine, now, so the "Holy shit! What the hell is this?" experience from Oblivion is gone.

Second is that I tended to play Oblivion in the winter when everything was gray and dreary outside and I wanted some color in my life. Skyrim doesn't satisfy this because it looks way too much like outside does right now. Who knows, though, maybe come August when it's sweltering hot outside I'll fire up Skyrim and take in the pleasant chilling effect.

The main stream media is the liberal media that's my point. Society needs more people figuring that out. For as much as people hate them (FOX news, Glen Beck etc,) they do bring stories forth stories that the main stream does not. EX. Main stream imply that Muslims are a peaceful religion. Its not. The true desire of this religion is to convert or kill. They treat their women like dogs. How can Americans tolerate that? But yet main stream media play stories that they are a nice bunch of people. >> ^alcom:

@bobknight33, who said anything about liberal? I think the larger issue is the "chilling" effect legal action and the loss of corporate sponsorship has on objective reporting in the modern media. From wikipedia:
"In a legal context, a chilling effect is the term used to describe the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of a constitutional right by the threat of legal sanction."
More to Farrakhan's point, read this article from 2006 on eneregygrid.com - here's a snip:
"US liberal media is dying because it has started to play by the same rules as mainstream media — primary being not to annoy your corporate sponsors by presenting anything too radical."
>> ^bobknight33:
This guy, like the left is wrong!
GE is the largest media empire. GE is so left leaning it is falling over. Its so large, its over 120 Billion larger than it #2 competitor Walt Disney who only did 36 Billion in revenues.. Fox is owned by News Corp who only did 30 Billion in revenue. Sounds like the left is the king of slant.
2009 revenues: $157 billion GE
2009 revenues: $36.1 billion Disney
2009 revenues: $30.4 billion News Corp ( FOX)
2009 revenues: $25.8 billion Time Warner
Who owns what in Media link

@bobknight33, who said anything about liberal? I think the larger issue is the "chilling" effect legal action and the loss of corporate sponsorship has on objective reporting in the modern media. From wikipedia:
"In a legal context, a chilling effect is the term used to describe the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of a constitutional right by the threat of legal sanction."

More to Farrakhan's point, read this article from 2006 on eneregygrid.com - here's a snip:

"US liberal media is dying because it has started to play by the same rules as mainstream media — primary being not to annoy your corporate sponsors by presenting anything too radical."

>> ^bobknight33:

This guy, like the left is wrong!
GE is the largest media empire. GE is so left leaning it is falling over. Its so large, its over 120 Billion larger than it #2 competitor Walt Disney who only did 36 Billion in revenues.. Fox is owned by News Corp who only did 30 Billion in revenue. Sounds like the left is the king of slant.
2009 revenues: $157 billion GE
2009 revenues: $36.1 billion Disney
2009 revenues: $30.4 billion News Corp ( FOX)
2009 revenues: $25.8 billion Time Warner
Who owns what in Media link

>> ^mizila:

>> ^ant:
>> ^radx:
promote
Big props for technology, this is a much better visualization than old b/w pictures side by side back like we had back in the days.

And satellite aerial views?

I found these sliding before-and-after images from the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times to be a chillingly effective use of technology to showcase the devastation caused by this disaster.


More: http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/beforeafter.htm

>> ^ant:

>> ^radx:
promote
Big props for technology, this is a much better visualization than old b/w pictures side by side back like we had back in the days.

And satellite aerial views?


I found these sliding before-and-after images from the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times to be a chillingly effective use of technology to showcase the devastation caused by this disaster.

>> ^gtjwkq:
The Fed is a secretive entity with govt given powers but no govt oversight, there is a bill in Congress to audit the Federal Reserve for exactly that reason: Even the govt doesn't know what the Fed does!

Here's an area where we have some common ground. I want the Fed audited and a bit more accountable to Congressional oversight. However, the reason why the fed is so independent is to attempt to isolate it from the winds of political machinations. Making it more controlled by government is a step closer to socialism, not further away (not that I think that matters, but I'm surprised you'd be for anything slightly like that).

Setting that aside, I do think public accountability for the Fed (and the rest of government) is important, so I hope the "Audit the Fed" campaign succeeds.

So your argument is that if markets are so smart, why don't they adapt to this huge entity that has a monopoly on the currency and prosper anyway? Why aren't you asking the opposite of that: If the Fed is so predictably and correctly setting interest rates, why isn't most of the market making the right long-term decisions?

I don't assume a perfect Fed, but I definitely ask why the market isn't making the right long-term decisions. My personal answer is a corporate culture driven by short-term gains. However, I think perhaps it's less politically volatile for me to say that behavioral research indicates that human beings have trouble understanding long-term schemes, especially when there's a delay of gratification required.

As the article I linked put it, there's no particular reason to think that artificially stimulated investments have a greater tendency to be malinvestments. If the market can deal with all market-related pressures as complex as they are, certainly they can discern the reaction of a single bureaucratic institution.

Booms and busts happen naturally in a market,

True.

but they have a much smaller scale and cause minimal destruction when central banks are not involved.

False.

Maybe if the market could create their own currencies, we'd have parallel competing currencies, and no one would be confined to the arbitrary rules of the unwarranted and unnecessary monopoly that is the Fed. The best money would naturally be chosen by the market itself. Ever thought of that?

Yes! The result of actually doing that in the US, and the resultant opacity of dozens of money-issuing banks, all with their own evil agendas financial motivations for manipulating their currency is what led to the implementation of a unified national currency and (later) a central bank. The argument at the time was that interest rates fluctuated too quickly and too wildly, and it had a chilling effect on the economy. Central banking has been a stabilizing influence since.

Central banks are not creations of the market, they are only possible because of govt.

True. But this is a non-sequitor, unless you're starting from the premise that because it's created by government it is therefore an inherently bad thing.

That's political ideology talking, not economics.