This controversial telecommunications legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.

via: Democracy Now!

North Carolina

Source for data above

I believe this resolution reflects the opinion of the majority of citizens who vote in local elections. An overwhelming majority of them are liberal democrats. They’re tolerant and loving people. This atmosphere allows for very liberal people to have a friendly home. Especially in conservative North Carolina. We really are lucky here.

Lest you think the only people who vote here are liberal college students, the petition that brought about this resolution was submitted by local citizens group Elders for Peace. I signed that petition as soon as I was asked!

PDF : Petition to Impeach Bush from Elders for Peace

An informal, inclusive progressive drinking club. Raise your spirits while you raise your glass, and share ideas while you share a pitcher. Drinking Liberally gives like-minded, left-leaning individuals a place to talk politics. You don’t need to be a policy expert and this isn’t a book club – just come and learn from peers, trade jokes, vent frustration and hang out in an environment where it’s not taboo to talk politics.

Bars are democratic spaces – you talk to strangers, you share booths, you feel the bond of common ground. Bring democratic discourse to your local democratic space – build democracy one drink at a time.

Via: OrangePolitics, BlueNC

Now that US national politicians are adopting podcasting – are they working for bottom up control of government or just using the latest hyped communication medium?

Senators, let me hip you to something. Podcasting didn’t come about to reinvent radio and PR. Podcasting was nurtured on the energy of individuals with their own messages. This is the very core of a grassroots democracy. Share more of your process of governing with all the people who live in America. (Citizens and non-citizens) Let them have a hand in your government. Let them be creative! For tips on how to do this look at how local politics are conducted. I’m talking about a town or county level. Reproduce that nationally!

I hope it will help people learn about these lifestyles and have respect for them. So much fear and ignorance abounds. Even the most progressive democrats I know are terrified by the ideas behind Anarchism. It isn’t just made up of the violent, no rules, black hooded, molotov cocktail throwing crowd.

Fear of Anarchism is truly perpetuated by governments. Mainly because some Anarchists suggest that governments aren’t necessary. Some are against ANY government and some are against national governments only.

One of my favorite parts is:

After Isabell came home from college an anarchist herself, I began to put aside my preconceptions about these people — as disorderly, violent and destructive — and to see them as a community dedicated to replacing hierarchy with consensus and cooperation. (Isabell once described them as Quakers who swear a lot.) Over time I found myself drawn to their hopeful view that people know best what is best for them and to their determination, naïve or not, to build a better world right away. Anarchism, at least as practiced here, seemed to be more about building community gardens and making your own fun than about black bandannas and confrontations with the riot police (although it was about those things, too).

If you want the facts about Anarchism I recommend you read An Anarchist FAQ Webpage. But the only way to really understand is by getting to know people with an open heart.

Wasn’t there a good reason to split up Ma Bell in the first place? Times certainly have changed but duopolies (AT&T and Verizon) are just as bad as monopolies. The deregulation of the telecommunications industry has been a disaster for consumers and the free flow of information. It has lead to the consolidation of corporate competitors who once provided a mediocre amount of choice, service, and pricing. Now our choices could be fewer and worse. (Choice is one of the consumers greatest powers.)

This new corporate giant could make it much harder for our Congressional representatives to resist the privatization of the Internet. A bigger company has more resources to create armies of lobbyist with pockets full of cash.

The effect upon localities could be big too. Having a large multinational corporation breathing down your neck when you try to negotiate any kind of deal for your citizens is going to be hard. Not to mention the notoriously bad customer support AT&T provides. Not just bad for individuals but bad support for towns themselves. (I snagged the graphic from MediaGeeks site. Thanks man!)

This news raises the urgency level even higher. Local communities need to create their own municipal networks. (Voice and Data) Citizens need their cities and towns to provide them equal access to municipal networks now more than ever!

To get much better analysis and links to lots of good info about this merger read MediaGeek’s blog posts It’s Confirmed — AT&T Planning To Gobble Up BellSouth, Public Interest Be Damned and Recreating a Monopoly.

An important point they leave out in this article is that fact the NYT held onto the domestic spying story for over a year. They even consulted the government before going public with it. Bush can call the leak a “shameful act” all he wants but he allowed it to happen and knew it was going to happen way before the general public did. Why? Because Bush and his cronies want to maintain an appearance of government as usual, plausible deniability, protect a falling approval rating, etc. If they held this news any longer they’d be impeached by now.

Context is so important to news stories. Main stream media doesn’t provide context very well. You either have to be paying VERY good attention or know someone that you trust who does. This is a big reason why blogs are so important! Blogs provide context and connect the dots in the media history landscape!

Alan McSurely gives an update on efforts to get our member of congress, David Price, to support impeachment of President Bush. There’s been a community forum, two meetings with Price, and now…

We present the Case for Impeachment on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 p.m. at Chapel Hill Town Hall. Michelle Cotton Laws and Rev. Robert Seymour will participate, along with Prof. Dan Pollitt and myself. We will be announcing the formation of GRIM, and asking for your help to build the Movement.

Since the press reported the massive unconstitutional domestic spying program of President Bush and Vice President Cheney 2 months ago, a spontaneous grass roots impeachment movement has taken off. One poll showed over 53% of the American people favored an impeachment investigation, over 90% of African Americans were for such an investigation, and over 24% Republicans. This belief that our two leaders have committed crimes is well grounded. The men lied to Congress to give them authority to invade a sovereign nation. Their intentional lies, mixed with their massive ignorance of the Iraqi nation and stumblebum incompetence in handling basic governmental functions has led to the murderous mayhem in Iraq that has destroyed the Nation’s leaders, its culture, and tens of thousands of its children. This is a high crime.

The carefully constructed plausible deniability of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield about U.S. intelligence forces torture program has been blown. They knew about, permitted, and ratified the most cruel and unusual punishments of prisoners including tying prisoners to waterboards for faked drownings, mocking prisoner’s sexual mores and religious beliefs, and other cruelties that have been photographed and shown to the world. They have ordered prisoners held for years without hearings or charges. These acts have been outlawed by every civilized society, including the U.S. for centuries. Bush knew the poor Black neighborhoods of New Orleans would be wiped out when the dams broke. Bush fiddled on his Texas farm while Black people drowned. Intentional failure to provide equal protection to all citizens is a constitutional violation. These are high crimes.

Bush/Cheney set up a massive spying program that was specifically prohibited by the 4th Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) after the unconstitutional abuses of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Defense Intelligence Agencies were exposed in the 1970´s Watergate inquiries. It is such a blatant violation that Republican Senators are trying to blunt the impeachment movement by talking about retroactively making the violations legal. This far-fetched fig-leaf will draw more attention to the impeachable crimes they have already committed.

If such convincing evidence were presented to a competent law enforcement official, prosecuting attorney, grand jury, or probable cause Judge, they would quickly file charges and set the trial date. Taken together the lies, spies, torture and ethnic cleansing in New Orleans is overwhelming. This is the basis for the grass roots impeachment movement.

BUSH AND CHENEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT BLUFFING

Like poker players who have been caught cheating and who have nothing in the hole, Bush and Cheney’s initial reaction is to bluff some more. Bush’s handlers send him out to his vetted daily photo opportunities where he tries to impersonate his hero, Ronald Reagan, acting like his hero, the Marlboro Man. But as people jump his right wing ship daily, Bush’s personal insecurities are beginning to take over. Compare his facial expressions when he lies now with how he acted say, six months ago. His frat boy cockiness covers a very short fuse.

As Scooter Libby can begin to hear the jail doors clanging, he and his lawyers are implying that Cheney directed Libby to out a CIA agent Cheney didn’t like. This stressful news was on the Sunday morning talk shows two weeks ago, but Cheney got as far away from D.C. as possible, to a beer party at a Texas ranch with old friends. He was so relaxed he shot a friend in a bright orange coat about 30 yards away on Saturday about 5 p.m. Instead of reporting this shooting immediately, so he could be given a breathalyzer and the forensic and other material evidence could be preserved, law enforcement and the public were not given any facts until after the Sunday morning talk shows and the alcohol were past/passed. Cheney’s psychological state was revealed by his hostess. She said her first thought, when she saw Cheney’s secret service detail rushing toward him, was that Cheney had suffered a heart attack. Bush and Cheney´s psychological state is not our concern. Their corporate sponsors will pay for empathetic handlers to approach them with golden parachutes, as they did with Nixon when his lies and crimes became evident to everyone but himself.

The task of the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement (GRIM) is to make it clear to every politician, Republican and Democratic, that the criminal acts of Bush/Cheney must be tried quickly in the U.S. Senate. For this trial to take place, 218 members of the House of Representatives must file charges against them. We are working on the one member we have some control over, Cong. David Price.

AN INTERIM REPORT

The Carrboro Forum: Starting from scratch in mid-January, we held an overwhelmingly successful forum, ¨The Case for Impeachment¨ in Carrboro in late January. At the close of the presentations, Carrboro Alderman to be, Dan Coleman, asked the crowd of over 140 how many supported asking Cong. Price to be a sponsor of House Bill 635, that calls for a Congressional investigation leading toward impeachment. Practically everyone raised their hands, except for the two members of Cong. Price´s staff who were there. Coleman then asked how many people would support a candidate to run against him, if Price refused to sponsor the impeachment bill. Practically everyone raised their hand again.

1st Price Meeting: The following week, a dozen people who had attended the Carrboro forum met with Cong. Price and the two staffers who had briefed him on our agenda. He implied the impeachment demand was not “middle America” and said he was interested in requesting a special prosecutor, like Clinton had agreed to Kenneth Starr, to investigate Bush´s acts. Price said he got the idea from Al Gore´s recent speech. We asked him pointblank whether he would become the first white Southerner to sponsor Cong. John Conyers´ bill that had about 10 sponsors then. Price asked whether Cong. Mel Watt had signed it. (No.) Shortly after our meeting, Price and Watt had a meeting with a predominantly Black group at the N.C. Mutual Building in Durham. Watt said he thought talk about impeachment was premature. Professor emeritus Chuck Stone polled the crowd as to whether they favored impeachment and about half raised their hands. Stone chided the rest for being timid.

2nd Price Meeting: We met with Price again last week. He showed us a letter that he and another member had written Bush, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate himself. We asked, incredulously, did he think Bush would respond? He said no. We again asked him to sponsor the Impeachment Investigation Bill, which now has over 25 sponsors. The only southern sponsors are two Black members from Georgia, John Lewis (the “conscience of the House”) and Cynthia McKinney. We also suggested he and like-minded Members hold hearings throughout the South to educate the people about the crimes and the need for impeachment. He implied he believed coming out openly for impeachment hearings now would marginalize us. We left agreeing that there are many approaches to this constitutional crisis.

Other Developments

Mr. Kent Kanoy, from Carrboro, who works at Duke, filed in the Democratic Primary and is carrying the Impeachment Banner proudly. The Primary is May 2nd. According to experts, about 20,000 votes will carry the Democratic primary.

The first counterattack from Rove to the national Impeachment Movement is that the more we ¨extremists¨ talk Impeachment, the more it will mobilize the Republican right wing base for the off-year election. If every time Rove trots out one of his dirty tricks we play into it, we should hang it up.

We present the Case for Impeachment on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 p.m. at Chapel Hill Town Hall. Michelle Cotton Laws and Rev. Robert Seymour will participate, along with Prof. Dan Pollitt and myself. We will be announcing the formation of GRIM, and asking for your help to build the Movement.

My O’Reilly Etel Talk
by David Isenberg
With apologies to Dr. Seuss
(a talk at O’Reilly Etel by David S. Isenberg January 26, 2006)

When Ed Whitacre, the head of AT&T, says,
“They’re not going to use my pipes for free”
he’s not talking about Them, he’s talking about Me.
He’s talking about Us, it should be plain to see.

When Whitaker says “free” he’s not talking about beer.
It’s our Freedom of Speech that’s at stake here.
Whitaker wants to privatize our right to express.
And he’s even got some laws in front of the US Congress,
Bad laws.
Laws that would make everybody with a public hotspot register with the FCC.
Laws that would let the telephone companies discriminate
Information that is dangerous from info that is safe
But who are they to decide?
The Free Internet gives *us* that right.

Now the law has a flaw, or so they say
So the telcos send our data to NSA
As if we’re all Osama and we might get away

Freedom to connect,
it’s like every other right.
We’ve got to fight,
Or they’ll come and take it from us
in the middle of the night.

The Bells want to split the Net in two,
Keep one part the same and give it to you.
A sliver of bandwidth that stays the same,
Even as Moore’s Law continues to change the game,
Until “our Internet” is a rutted dirt road,
And their piece is a turnpike with heavy, heavy tolls.

Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and Skype,
They’re already successful, they can make deals for those pipes.
But when I want to publish stuff in my blog
It will not be OK for you to once again pay.
We already pay for our Internet connection.
We don’t need to subsidize a dying industry’s obsession!
If looking at my blog cost you an extra dime
You’d probably find another way to spend your time.

More importantly, when you hackers field a fragile new app
You don’t want it blocked by Ed Whitacre’s crap,
Cause when Whitacre says, “They’re not going to use my pipes for free”
He’s not talking about Them, he’s talking about Me.
He’s talking about Us, that should be plain to see.

Freedom to connect,
it’s like every other right.
We’ve got to fight,
Or they’ll come and take it from us
in the middle of the night.

Internet freedom is Freedom of Speech.
You don’t need it if you’re just engaging in pleasantries.
But you do if you want an educated pesantry.
If kleptocrats are stealing, it’s important to know it.
If the mendocrats are lying it’s important to show it.
If you’ve got a whistle, you can’t ask their permission to blow it.

Today Information is struggling to be free
So we can protect what’s left of Democracy.
Us little guys, we’ve got pieces of information
About who’s been holding back our once-and-future nation
From broadband penetration.
This information will never be on TV,
Another reason the Internet has to be free.

When you sit there at your keyboard
and you struggle with the bugs,
You know creation is a process
not much different than love.
It is fragile as a flower in the morning dew
So you don’t want big brother fucking with you.

If they fuck with you, you’ve gotta stand up and say.
Give me a Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.
The author of this saying is our own Tim Bray.
Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

I’m taking my bad poetry to Washington DC.
I’d like everybody in this room to come with me.
April 3 and 4 in Washington DC,
Freedom-to-Connect will be The Place to be
If you want the Internet to stay free.
I’m partnering with Pulver, and I’d like to get Tim,
And I’d like to get you, and her and him.

In another revolution, Ben Franklin said,
“We must hang together or assuredly
we shall all hang separately.”
This statement is still true.
I trust you see its importance to you.
The Name of the Conference is Freedom to Connect.
April 3 and 4 in Washington DC,
Freedom-to-Connect is The place to be.
April 3 and 4 in Washington DC
We’ll take it home to Congress and the FCC.

Freedom to connect,
it’s like every other right.
We’ve got to fight,
Or they’ll come and take it from us
in the middle of the night.

So let’s finish with the words of Tim Bray,
Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

When we write to our congressman, what do we say?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when Whitaker says “Pay again” what do we say?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when BellSouth blocks our cities from doing WiFi?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when the telcos own your statehouse, what do you say?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when China blocks it bloggers, what do we say?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when the NSA spies on us what do we say?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

And when the FCC shuts down your ISP?
(audience) Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

Thank you. I hope to see you in Washington DC,
April 3 and 4

One of those new types of access is Internet access. (Wi-Fi is one way to access information on the Internet.) It is steady stream of information that allows people to do all kinds of valuable and important things. In only a few years we have seen this access move from a mere toy to an extremely valuable tool. Very soon Internet access will be more than a tool but a resource that we all can not live without.

In order to assure that public Internet access is consistently provided, maintained, upgraded, and use education is made available we need a long term solution provider. This Internet access provider must have the resources to continue services well into the future. This robustness requires the service provider to function through difficult and prosperous economic times. Because of technologies swift rate of change, profit can not be the primary goal if public Internet access is to be consistently provided.

For these reasons and many others we have a public non-profit entity called OWASA provide our water access. They have the support of the town and county governments and a mandate to continue providing equal access to water resources indefinitely. This type of organization is the best kind to provide public information access to the Citizens of Chapel Hill. Let’s all work together to facilitate the creation of a new non-profit organization to provide public Internet access for all citizens of Chapel Hill.

The Issue
Basically big corporations who provide Internet access to companies such as Google and Yahoo want to charge them extra for “preferred services”. This could speed up, slow down, or block an individual users access to search services Google and Yahoo provide. Imagine not being able to find what you want via a Google search. In essence Bell South and Verizon want to put a traffic cop at the Internet spigot and control what SPECIFIC data goes through, how much, how often, and at what quality. This is not the free flow of information that the Internet was built upon.

Read what other people have to say about attempts at corporate cyberextortion by big telcos like Bell South.

From Preston Gralla:

“BellSouth and Verizon have been trying to force big Web sites to pay extortion-type fees if the sites want adequate bandwidth, with Google a prime target. But Google has news for them: It won’t pay.”

“Google’s Barry Schnitt told Paul in an email: “Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations.”

From Cory Doctorow:

“Google has rebuffed to an outrageous demand by BellSouth, in which the phone company proposed to charge Google for access to its customers. Bill Smith of Bell South told reporters that he wanted “to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.” Google has responded with an unequivocal no — a flat refusal to pay blood-money to carriers to keep them from discriminating against its services. Honestly, what the hell is BellSouth thinking? The whole point of an ISP is that it delivers the same packets as every other ISP; anything else is substandard. There’s only one Google, but T1s come and go.”

From Doc Searls: (Thanks for all the links Doc!)

“BellSouth wasn’t thinking. They were doing what big carriers usually do, which is look for ways to make big money with tiered service to big customers. Dumb, perhaps, in this case; but predictable.”

[ Doc wins the best blog post title of the year (so far) IMHO: Google to BellSouth: Go Tier Yourself a New One ]

For LOTs of context read Doc’s Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes.

Washington Post:
Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed and The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet

I wrote a post called Angry BellSouth and Anti-Public Good Chapel Hill Business, about similar issues with the data access war here in Chapel Hill,NC.

Thanks to Ed Cone for reminding me about this serious subject.

Organizations are now doing somthing about this. The ACLU is suing the NSA! [Wow!] There is something you can do about it. Sign the Move On Pettition to Restore the Rule of Law. Here is the letter that will be sent to your elected representative and the Justice Department. Public pressure works. Especially during a election year.

YOUR COMMENT TO CONGRESS AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

TO: Your Senators
CC: (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)
FROM: (Your Name and Email)
SUBJECT: Thoroughly Investigate the Wiretapping Program
__________

Dear (Senator/Attorney General),

(Your personal note)

President Bush admitted to personally authorizing thousands of potentially illegal wiretaps, and he doesn’t plan to stop. This abuse of power threatens the very core of our Constitution.

We demand a thorough and independent investigation of the Bush administration’s allegedly illegal wiretapping activities, including: (1) appointment of an independent counsel to respond to any criminal activity that may have taken place, (2) a thorough, meaningful and open Congressional investigation, (3) protection for all whistleblowers who come forward with evidence of wrongdoing in this program.

Sincerely,
(Your name)
(Your address)

I just listened to Scientists Say Venom Taken From Politicians Could Provide Medical Benefits and laughed out LOUD!

Note to self: Never eat or drink while listening to The Onion Radio News. Unless you want it spit all over your monitor. (I’m serious this shit is funny. Depressed cause that Shrub is a sadistic criminal? Get your releaf from the sound of Doyle Redland.)

It could be a wonderful way to transmit knowledge from generation to generation to generation. This project seems especially important, to me, because the technical illiteracy of some seniors can separate them and their knowledge from younger people who are on the Internet. Shouldn’t all knowledge, emotion, and experiences of adults be passed on to future generations? If we don’t document this information and put it on the Internet it may completely disappear in the future. Books of information will hopefully always be around. But because searching the Internet is so easy and discovering metadata from it is so great having your knowledge on the net is a necessity, IMHO.

A lot of my interest are in radical left politics and the activism that comes from struggle. Sadly many of these struggles are not new to human kind. It seems we’re always taking three steps forward and two steps back. We have traditional methods of passing on information about radical activism knowledge. Great books, teach-ins, consensus groups, fairs, bookstores, etc. But wouldn’t it be great to hear about how-to conduct a sit-in straight from men and women who’ve done it? Wouldn’t it be incredible to listen to instructions on organizing a strike? What about watching experienced radicals discuss movement building? There are so many more possibilities. I wish we had recordings of Bob Sheldon who founded the Internationalist Bookstore in 1981. (maybe we do… ?)

I suppose my recordings of Stan Goff reading his writing about Marxist economic theory counts. But the NC Storyblogging project may be looking for any content gathered. I’m sure rambling story telling is just as welcomed.

But because all knowledge is important I’m interested in documenting many things. Not just politically left concepts from experienced radicals. So I’m sure I’ll be helping Anton record all kinds of stuff. And to be perfectly clear Anton is interested in many story topics. So don’t assume my interest are a limitation of his wonderful project. Respect.

The notion that war is intrinsic to man’s nature is dealt a powerful setback in Stan Goff’s Sex and War. Goff, a former Special Forces sergeant, argues persuasively that rather than being born that way, men are made into killers by governments, corporations, and systems of power. Drawing both on his experiences in the military and on his reading of feminist writers such as Patricia Williams, bell hooks, and Chandra Mohanty — and as the father of a son stationed in Iraq — Goff journeys through wars, ideologies, and cultures, revealing the transformation of men into killers. His story encompasses not just the battlefield and the book, but the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, the eros of George W. Bush, pornography, the Taliban, and gays and lesbians in the military. Goff’s remarkable ability to connect his own personal experiences to contemporary feminist criticism makes for a provocative discussion of war and masculinity.

Thanks to Ruby for reminding me to blog this…

You can get summaries of the Alito hearings at the Planed Parenthood Now What?! Blog. I believe you can also get some video streams of the hearings at CSPAN.org. They even have a CSPAN Podcast page.

Are there any citizen journalist covering this? Would be great to download the entire event via RSS!

I’ve read a lot on the web and email lists recently about false information being written on Wikipedia. Such as Adam Curry changing the Podcasting entry on Wikipedia to suit his version of events and John Seigenthaler Sr. being connected to the assignation of John F. Kennedy. This is really just a demonstration of new power. Now that people have the knowledge and the tools they have at it.

Dave Winer wrote:

In June I wrote People With Erasers about Wikipedia. Now after reading about the Seigenthaler affair, and revelations about Adam Curry’s rewriting of the podcasting history — the bigger problem is that Wikipedia is so often considered authoritative. That must stop now, surely. Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a confict of interest. Further, we need to determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship. And we need to take a step back and ask if we really want the participants in history to write and rewrite the history. Isn’t there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events?

The fact is we are all participants. No one who is reading the web is a non-participant. We have access to so much media we become part of it. If we compeltly ignor the media – like the web – then we are not part of it. If we are not part of it then we can not observe and report on it.

The tension I described above about the editing of wikipedia is just a growing pain. Pain from loosing control over others. Those who had control may not even realized they had it. The experts, trusted sources, gatekeepers, professors, teachers, editors, encyclopedias, dictionaries, media, leaders, and the parents are no longer in complete control. The masses have discovered that racket. Now we all can read and write. Let’s their be no one in charge!

The most amazing part he reveals is that “Winning the Popular Vote is Not Winning the Presidency” in Bolivia. I’m just beginning to understand how other countries political systems work. It demonstrates just how unfairly the US system blocks diverse groups from realistically participating in government. The US brand of democracy is so flawed. It completely depends on its flag waving PR to exist. If only the majority of US citizens knew how unfair their system was AND really cared about it… IMAGINE!

It seems no matter where you live, “Being a strong opposition instead of a weak government has its advantages”.