90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Girls With Guns

The Utopian Life That Wasn't...

The history of American slavery began long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. Evidence from archaeology and oral tradition indicates that for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years prior, Native Americans had developed their own forms of bondage. This fact should not be surprising, for most societies throughout history have practiced slavery.

In her cross-cultural and historical research on comparative captivity, Catherine Cameron found that bondspeople composed 10 percent to 70 percent of the population of most societies, lending credence to Seymour Drescher’s assertion that “freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution.” If slavery is ubiquitous, however, it is also highly variable. Indigenous American slavery, rooted in warfare and diplomacy, was flexible, often offering its victims escape through adoption or intermarriage, and it was divorced from racial ideology, deeming all foreigners—men, women, and children, of whatever color or nation—potential slaves. Thus, Europeans did not introduce slavery to North America. Rather, colonialism brought distinct and evolving notions of bondage into contact with one another.

At times, these slaveries clashed, but they also reinforced and influenced one another. Colonists, who had a voracious demand for labor and export commodities, exploited indigenous networks of captive exchange, producing a massive global commerce in Indian slaves. This began with the second voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1495 and extended in some parts of the Americas through the twentieth century. During this period, between 2 and 4 million Indians were enslaved. Elsewhere in the Americas, Indigenous people adapted Euro-American forms of bondage.

In the Southeast, an elite class of Indians began to hold African Americans in transgenerational slavery and, by 1800, developed plantations that rivaled those of their white neighbors. The story of Native Americans and slavery is complicated: millions were victims, some were masters, and the nature of slavery changed over time and varied from one place to another. A significant and long overlooked aspect of American history, Indian slavery shaped colonialism, exacerbated Native population losses, figured prominently in warfare and politics, and influenced Native and colonial ideas about race and identity.

EU Internet Censorship Will Censor the Whole World's Internet

As the EU advances the new Copyright Directive towards becoming law in its 28 member-states, it's important to realise that the EU's plan will end up censoring the Internet for everyone, not just Europeans.

A quick refresher: Under Article 13 of the new Copyright Directive, anyone who operates a (sufficiently large) platform where people can post works that might be copyrighted (like text, pictures, videos, code, games, audio etc) will have to crowdsource a database of "copyrighted works" that users aren't allowed to post, and block anything that seems to match one of the database entries.

These blacklist databases will be open to all comers (after all, anyone can create a copyrighted work): that means that billions of people around the world will be able to submit anything to the blacklists, without having to prove that they hold the copyright to their submissions (or, for that matter, that their submissions are copyrighted). The Directive does not specify any punishment for making false claims to a copyright, and a platform that decided to block someone for making repeated fake claims would run the risk of being liable to the abuser if a user posts a work to which the abuser does own the rights.

The major targets of this censorship plan are the social media platforms, and it's the "social" that should give us all pause.

That's because the currency of social media is social interaction between users. I post something, you reply, a third person chimes in, I reply again, and so on.

Now, let's take a hypothetical Twitter discussion between three users: Alice (an American), Bob (a Bulgarian) and Carol (a Canadian).

Alice posts a picture of a political march: thousands of protesters and counterprotesters, waving signs. As is common around the world, these signs include copyrighted images, whose use is permitted under US "fair use" rules that permit parody. Because Twitter enables users to communicate significant amounts of user-generated content, they’ll fall within the ambit of Article 13.

Bob lives in Bulgaria, an EU member-state whose copyright law does not permit parody. He might want to reply to Alice with a quote from the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, whose works were translated into English in the late 1970s and are still in copyright.

Carol, a Canadian who met Bob and Alice through their shared love of Doctor Who, decides to post a witty meme from "The Mark of the Rani," a 1985 episode in which Colin Baker travels back to witness the Luddite protests of the 19th Century.

Alice, Bob and Carol are all expressing themselves through use of copyrighted cultural works, in ways that might not be lawful in the EU’s most speech-restrictive copyright jurisdictions. But because (under today's system) the platform typically is only required to to respond to copyright complaints when a rightsholder objects to the use, everyone can see everyone else's posts and carry on a discussion using tools and modes that have become the norm in all our modern, digital discourse.

But once Article 13 is in effect, Twitter faces an impossible conundrum. The Article 13 filter will be tripped by Alice's lulzy protest signs, by Bob's political quotes, and by Carol's Doctor Who meme, but suppose that Twitter is only required to block Bob from seeing these infringing materials.

Should Twitter hide Alice and Carol's messages from Bob? If Bob's quote is censored in Bulgaria, should Twitter go ahead and show it to Alice and Carol (but hide it from Bob, who posted it?). What about when Bob travels outside of the EU and looks back on his timeline? Or when Alice goes to visit Bob in Bulgaria for a Doctor Who convention and tries to call up the thread? Bear in mind that there's no way to be certain where a user is...

Florida / Broward County Voters Guide:

Get An Absentee Or Sample Ballot HERE

Recommendations From Richard DeNapoli:

(I looked them over, looks good to me)

UNITED STATES SENATOR
Rick Scott

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS DISTRICT 22
Nicolas Kimaz

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS DISTRICT 23
Joseph "Joe" Kaufman

GOVERNOR & LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Ron DeSantis & Jeanette Nuñez

ATTORNEY GENERAL
Ashley Moody

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Jimmy Patronis

COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE
Matt Caldwell

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 93
Chip LaMarca

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 98
Joseph Anthony Cruz

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 103
Frank Mingo

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 105
Ana Maria Rodriguez

COUNTY COMMISSIONER DISTRICT 4
Shari L. McCartney

RETENTION VOTE JUSTICES OF THE
FLORIDA SUPREME COURT
Alan Lawson - Vote YES

RETENTION VOTE 4th DISTRICT COURT OF
APPEAL JUSTICES
Burton C. Conner – Vote YES
Jeffrey T. Kunz – Vote YES
Carole Y. Taylor – Vote YES

CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE, GROUP 38
Jason Allen-Rosner OR Stefanie Camille Moon

CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE, GROUP 46
Maria Markhasin-Weekes

COUNTY COURT JUDGE, GROUP 9
Tanner Channing Demmery

COUNTY COURT JUDGE, GROUP 19
Allison Gilman

BROWARD SOIL & WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT, SEAT 2
Richard DeNapoli

CITY COMMISSION / MUNICIPAL

Cooper City Commission, District 2: William L. "Lenny" Athas

Dania Beach City Commission: Marco A. Salvino Jr.

Hallandale Beach Mayor: Joy D. Adams

Hollywood City Commission, District 5: Jack Izzo

Margate City Commission, Seat 3: Antonio Arserio

Oakland Park City Commission: Steve Arnst

Plantation
City Council, Group 1: Michael "Mike" Taussig
City Council, Group 2: Rico Petrocelli
City Council, Group 5: Timothy Fadgen
Mayor: Jennifer Izaguirre

Pompano Beach
City Commission, District 1: Andrea Leigh McGee
City Commission, District 2: Tom Terwilliger

Southwest Ranches City Commission, District 1: John Eastman

Tamarac
City Commission, District 2: Bill Mei
Mayor: Michelle Gomez

Weston City Commission, Seat 4: Nancy Cooke

STATEWIDE AMENDMENTS
Amendment 1: YES
Amendment 2: YES
Amendment 3: NO RECOMMENDATION
Amendment 4: NO
Amendment 5: YES
Amendment 6: YES
Amendment 7: YES
Amendment 8: Removed from Ballot
Amendment 9: YES
Amendment 10: NO
Amendment 11: YES
Amendment 12: YES
Amendment 13: NO

BROWARD SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:
Transportation Surtax: NO
County Commission District Map Standards: YES
County Redistricting Procedure: YES
Affordable Trust Fund Definition: YES
Discretion of Inspector General: YES
Revisions to Zoning Glossary: YES
Examining Board Alternate Members: YES
Quorum Shall be Majority: YES
Materials No Later than 48 Hours Before Meeting: YES
Independent Board Nominates Auditor: YES
Comp. of Inspect. Gen. Selection Oversight Com: YES
Delete Ineffective Language: YES

Leaking Feinstein

‘Sneaky Dianne Feinstein’ Says She Was ‘Pressured’ to Release Fusion GPS Testimony — but Doesn’t Say by Who

CONFIRMED: Former Feinstein Staffer Raised $50 Million, Hired Fusion GPS And Christopher Steele After 2016 Election

Feinstein Idiocy

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Ties To China Go Way Deeper Than An Alleged Office Spy

And They're Still Rapists: Alleged Child Predators In Florida Include 6 Hispanics, A Vietnamese, A Liberian, And A Greek Immigrant

The Polk County Sheriff's Department has announced the arrest of 13 men for attempting to have sex with young boys. There are horrifying details, but what you need to know his that about half of them are Hispanic, and the ones who aren't include a Vietnamese-American, a Greek immigrant, and a guy from Liberia. [13 men arrested in Polk County child predator operation,by Ken Suarez, FOX 13 News, October 9, 2018]