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With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

skyraider 14y ago
Build better proxies/tools of resistance, generally fight authority, just be a hacker and be on the lookout for ways to empower the downtrodden. The hacker instinct is to get around the system and fight authority. There's another hacker instinct, too, which is being totally and absurdly pedantic. Maybe there is an idea here. Sometimes the first world chooses leaders who are, at day's end, okay with a some of the horrors of barbaric legal systems (usually in exchange for increased security or the illusion thereof). One solution might be to be politically pedantic (seriously!) and not let them get away with even a bit of it.
- nwh 14y ago
  Unfortunately if people can go to jail for increnting a variable in a public URL, any effort of this nature is sure to draw the fire of United States law. I don't even live in the place, and it still scares the crap out of me.
atsaloli 14y ago
If you're in the US, pixelcort, may I invite you to consider the Downsize DC effort? (http://www.downsizedc.org/ http://www.downsizedc.org/) Here is a quick summary of what DownsizeDC.org is about: We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states. The strategy of Downsize DC is to leverage technology to make it easier for people to make their voices heard to the State. They make it easier to contact your Senate and House representatives regularly. The primary bill DownsizeDC is advocating is the Read the Bills Act -- make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law. That action alone would slow down the legislating machine. The other one is the One Subject at a Time act -- make each bill deal with one subject at a time, instead of bundling subjects, which would make it very clear about politician's positions on various issues, and let each issue stand on its own merit.
- carbocation 14y ago
  Isn't this topic -- the question of how to close Guantanamo Bay -- a prime counterexample to the virtues of "mak[ing] it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law" and "mak[ing] each bill deal with one subject at a time"? Wouldn't such requirements make politically unpopular things, such as touching Guantanamo Bay in any way, even more difficult to handle? This article doesn't strike me as fertile, favorable ground for this topic at all. Not that one would say this, but if the counterargument were to be, "this movement would have prevented Guantanamo in the first place," then (1) but I live in the world we have now, not a hypothetical world that we don't actually have, and (2) maybe so, maybe not.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law Not only is this the stupidest solution to a complex problem i've ever heard, it's depressing that some people take it seriously.
  - atsaloli 13y ago
    What do you consider the problem? Let's say government growing out of bound (and government's power growing compared to an individual's power) is a problem. One way to curb that growth is to slow down the functioning of government. But if you don't consider monotonic growth of government a problem, then we are very far apart indeed. =)
    - peterwwillis 13y ago
      I'm not here to discuss "the problem". Because there's totally just one problem with our government. "Slowing down the functioning of government" is not a good thing. "The government" (by this I assume you mean legislation) already moves at a snail's pace. Making it go slower, so reforms and important issues take even longer than they already do to resolve? NOT HELPING. People talk about the 'size' of 'government' like it's some kind of tangible property. Government is just the system by which our policies, actions and affairs are executed. It might be big, it might be small, it doesn't matter. It is whatever we need it to be. What concerns me are the issues and how we deal with them, not some abstract idea like "too much" or "not enough" of the system. If we need to get a respectable budget planned, a "big" or "small" government will not fix that. Your budget may be smaller because your "government" is smaller, but that doesn't make it a good budget. Your regulations of certain businesses may be smaller, but that doesn't mean the new free reign these businesses have will result in customers being treated fairly or allowing other businesses to compete. There are reason we have what we have. It's not like there's some super exponential growth formula being fed to a giant single celled organism called "government". There's hundreds of complex issues at hand, and your one-size-fits-all generic solution doesn't begin to address any of them. Rather it buries them under a carpet of obfuscation, waiting for the rug to be so choked by lack of observation that someone finally will throw it out for a new one.
stellar678 14y ago
It's pretty overwhelming at times because it seems so big, far away, impenetrable. But there are some contributions you can make pretty easily: 1. Financial support to the organizations fighting for whatever your believe in. (See: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) 2. Talking about it. If our politicians think we don't care, there's no pressure to do anything.
vpeters25 13y ago
Tell me about it, I grew up in Pinochet's Chile and it worries me deeply how our government is ignoring the constitution and bullying its way around the same way Pinochet did back in the 80's. With its treatment of gitmo detainees and persecution of wikileaks' Julian Assange, the US is lowering itself to the constitutional level of a run-of-the-mill banana republic.

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

skyraider 14y ago

Build better proxies/tools of resistance, generally fight authority, just be a hacker and be on the lookout for ways to empower the downtrodden. The hacker instinct is to get around the system and fight authority. There's another hacker instinct, too, which is being totally and absurdly pedantic. Maybe there is an idea here. Sometimes the first world chooses leaders who are, at day's end, okay with a some of the horrors of barbaric legal systems (usually in exchange for increased security or the illusion thereof). One solution might be to be politically pedantic (seriously!) and not let them get away with even a bit of it.

nwh 14y ago
Unfortunately if people can go to jail for increnting a variable in a public URL, any effort of this nature is sure to draw the fire of United States law. I don't even live in the place, and it still scares the crap out of me.

atsaloli 14y ago

If you're in the US, pixelcort, may I invite you to consider the Downsize DC effort? (http://www.downsizedc.org/ http://www.downsizedc.org/) Here is a quick summary of what DownsizeDC.org is about: We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states. The strategy of Downsize DC is to leverage technology to make it easier for people to make their voices heard to the State. They make it easier to contact your Senate and House representatives regularly. The primary bill DownsizeDC is advocating is the Read the Bills Act -- make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law. That action alone would slow down the legislating machine. The other one is the One Subject at a Time act -- make each bill deal with one subject at a time, instead of bundling subjects, which would make it very clear about politician's positions on various issues, and let each issue stand on its own merit.

carbocation 14y ago
Isn't this topic -- the question of how to close Guantanamo Bay -- a prime counterexample to the virtues of "mak[ing] it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law" and "mak[ing] each bill deal with one subject at a time"? Wouldn't such requirements make politically unpopular things, such as touching Guantanamo Bay in any way, even more difficult to handle? This article doesn't strike me as fertile, favorable ground for this topic at all. Not that one would say this, but if the counterargument were to be, "this movement would have prevented Guantanamo in the first place," then (1) but I live in the world we have now, not a hypothetical world that we don't actually have, and (2) maybe so, maybe not.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
peterwwillis 13y ago
make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law Not only is this the stupidest solution to a complex problem i've ever heard, it's depressing that some people take it seriously.
- atsaloli 13y ago
  What do you consider the problem? Let's say government growing out of bound (and government's power growing compared to an individual's power) is a problem. One way to curb that growth is to slow down the functioning of government. But if you don't consider monotonic growth of government a problem, then we are very far apart indeed. =)
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    I'm not here to discuss "the problem". Because there's totally just one problem with our government. "Slowing down the functioning of government" is not a good thing. "The government" (by this I assume you mean legislation) already moves at a snail's pace. Making it go slower, so reforms and important issues take even longer than they already do to resolve? NOT HELPING. People talk about the 'size' of 'government' like it's some kind of tangible property. Government is just the system by which our policies, actions and affairs are executed. It might be big, it might be small, it doesn't matter. It is whatever we need it to be. What concerns me are the issues and how we deal with them, not some abstract idea like "too much" or "not enough" of the system. If we need to get a respectable budget planned, a "big" or "small" government will not fix that. Your budget may be smaller because your "government" is smaller, but that doesn't make it a good budget. Your regulations of certain businesses may be smaller, but that doesn't mean the new free reign these businesses have will result in customers being treated fairly or allowing other businesses to compete. There are reason we have what we have. It's not like there's some super exponential growth formula being fed to a giant single celled organism called "government". There's hundreds of complex issues at hand, and your one-size-fits-all generic solution doesn't begin to address any of them. Rather it buries them under a carpet of obfuscation, waiting for the rug to be so choked by lack of observation that someone finally will throw it out for a new one.

stellar678 14y ago

It's pretty overwhelming at times because it seems so big, far away, impenetrable. But there are some contributions you can make pretty easily: 1. Financial support to the organizations fighting for whatever your believe in. (See: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) 2. Talking about it. If our politicians think we don't care, there's no pressure to do anything.

vpeters25 13y ago

Tell me about it, I grew up in Pinochet's Chile and it worries me deeply how our government is ignoring the constitution and bullying its way around the same way Pinochet did back in the 80's. With its treatment of gitmo detainees and persecution of wikileaks' Julian Assange, the US is lowering itself to the constitutional level of a run-of-the-mill banana republic.