#despotism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #despotism, aggregated by home.social.
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The #youth of #Russia shrieks out, but the old man of Russia grumbles. He solely wants their bodies to bear fruit, or litter the floor of the battlefield.
We see Russian refugees all over #Europe, except they're not really called that. In diaspora, some may say. But they are coming.
They sing once more songs of tzars and boyars, for they have seen with their own eyes what #despotism and #fascism does to a country.
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A quotation from Thomas Jefferson
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Document (1776-07-02), “Declaration of Independence”More about this quote: wist.info/jefferson-thomas/220…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomasjefferson #absolutepower #custom #despot #despotism #endurance #government #inertia #overthrow #putupwith #rebellion #revolution #suffering #tyranny #declarationofindependence
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A strange thing, when one considers it: to wit, the world applies to Czar and System the same moral axioms that have vogue and acceptance in civilized countries! Because, in civilized countries, it is wrong to remove oppressors otherwise than by process of law, it is held that the same rule applies in Russia, where there is no such thing as law — except for our Family. Laws are merely restraints — they have no other function. In civilized countries they restrain all persons, and restrain them all alike, which is fair and righteous; but in Russia such laws as exist make an exception — our Family. We do as we please; we have done as we pleased for centuries. Our common trade has been crime, our common pastime murder, our common beverage blood — the blood of the nation. Upon our heads lie millions of murders. Yet the pious moralist says it is a crime to assassinate us. We and our uncles are a family of cobras set over a hundred and forty million rabbits, whom we torture and murder and feed upon all our days; yet the moralist urges that to kill us is a crime, not a duty.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Story (1905-02-02), “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” North American Review, Vol. 180, No. 580 (1905-03)More about this quote: wist.info/twain-mark/83904/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #marktwain #twain #absolutepower #abovethelaw #assassination #civilization #despotism #greatergood #killing #lawlessness #morality #ruleoflaw #tyranny #violence -
A quotation from Madeleine L'Engle
We think because we have words, not the other way around, and the greater our vocabulary, the greater our ability to think conceptually. The first people a dictator puts in jail are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American writer
Speech (1983-11-16), “Dare To Be Creative,” Lecture, Library of Congress, Washington, DCMore about this quote: wist.info/lengle-madeleine/818…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lengle #madeleinelengle #censorship #communication #concepts #despotism #dictatorship #jailing #librarians #suppression #teachers #tyranny #vocabulary #wellspoken #writers
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Sen. Slotkin said #Trump “is attempting to use the #FBI to scare us.”
“Whether you agree with the video or don’t agree with the video, the question to me is: is this the appropriate response for a president of the United States to go after & seek to weaponize the federal government against those he disagrees with?”
#law #military #MilitaryLaw #UCMJ #despotism #fascism #tyranny #dissent #democracy #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech
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It would mark the 2nd investigation tied to the video, coming a day after the #Pentagon said it was reviewing Sen #MarkKelly (D-AZ) over potential violations of #MilitaryLaw (also bullshit). The #FBI & Pentagon actions come after #Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post.
#law #military #UCMJ #despotism #fascism #tyranny #dissent #democracy #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech
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Let the human Mind loose. It must be loose; it will be loose. Superstition and Despotism cannot confine it.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1816-11-13) to John Quincy AdamsMore about this quote: wist.info/adams-john/6140/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnadams #despotism #dogma #freethought #freedom #liberty #orthodoxy #superstition #tyranny #freethinking
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No person is so foolish that they don’t understand that if we remain asleep at this moment we will have to live through a rule that is not only cruel and arrogant but ignoble and disgraceful too. You know this man’s arrogance, his friends, and his whole household. To serve shameful lusts, bullies, disgusting and irreverent thieves, those drunkards — well, that is the worst suffering married to the greatest dishonor.
[Nemo est tam stultus qui non intellegat, si indormierimus huic tempori, non modo crudelem superbamque dominationem nobis sed ignominiosam etiam et flagitiosam ferendam. Nostis insolentiam Antoni, nostis amicos, nostis totam domum. Libidinosis, petulantibus, impuris, impudicis, aleatoribus, ebriis servire, ea summa miseria est summo dedecore coniuncta.]Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippics [Philippicae; Antonian Orations], No. 3, ch. 14 / sec. 34-35 (3.14/3.34-35) (44-12-20 BC) [tr. @sentantiq (2021)]Sourcing, notes, other translations: wist.info/cicero-marcus-tulliu…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #cicero #alertness #arrogance #attention #crisis #danger #despotism #dictatorship #disgrace #dishonor #misery #payattention #politics #regime #tyranny #warning #regime
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> On any online space, you should consider who you give power to. Who has the control over who you choose to associate with?
I concur 100% with this assertion.
> All that the instances who sign the fedipact are doing is signalling to some of us that somewhere is safe for folk who don't want to engage with Facebook at all.
I don't think that's all, and actually, What those instances may (inadvertently) be signalling is that they will take it upon themselves to remove the Freedom of Association from the user themselves, without prior expectation or consultation.
I don't know where "Freedom of Speech" entered the conversation, but the notion of "Freedom of Association" has indeed been taken from those who have chosen to excercise those privileges belonging to the users themselves. Waking up and realizing that you can no longer communicate and share recipes with grandma, without evern having been consulted, is an affront to the Freedom of Association - it's inclusive of an even larger issue surrounding the reasons that *smolweb and single-user and self-hosted platforms are protective of such principles Freedom of Association.
Further, it serves to create an environment (especially when so many platforms now support migration ingress) where one's Fediverse accounts are considered ever more transient, as the realization that having an account on a silo based Fediverse instance is the antipathy of #Fediverse and #DeSoc philosophies.
It also erodes the trust between the average user and administrators that you thought you could entrust with respecting your freedom of association with.
> This is a Freedom of Association issue, ...
it is indeed, and a betrayal of trust for anyone who realizes that it is the overreach by someone else to decide that you should not have the Freedom of Association that likely brought most folks to the Fediverse in the first place.
I did a little non-scientific, anecdotal survey by contacting people I know on many of the instances that arbitrarily decided to remove those freedoms from their users overnight, and discovered that many have already migrated to other instances, or are contemplating it - the interesting thing? Many of my acquaintances had already decided to, or even configured their accounts to block #Threads; but to have someone else tell them what they're allowed, or not allowed to do, is a violation of someone's freedom to choose for themselves by despot personalities who dismiss the relevance of a right to choose for oneself.
It's a simple matter, to block instances, at the domain level, from one's own user account, and on most Fediverse platforms, there's actually an announcement utility (usually only used to beg for donations) whereby administrative staff can inform their user base of their own ability to control how they themselves choose to exercise their own preferences with respect to #Freedom_of_Association.
Ironically, when perusing the stats, it's the very largest (deprecated, monolithic silo oriented) Fediverse instances (in terms of the # of user accounts and MAU) that have chosen NOT to trample upon the individual user's Freedom to Associate with whom they themselves decide.
NOTE to Fediverse instance admins: Please take under consideration the trust that has been placed in you with respect to the freedoms all individuals are entitled to determine for themselves - reach out to your user base, deploy surveys, collect votes, whatever, but please don't just decide for someone else what you decide is good for people who are NOT YOU.Subjugation and assimilation into the Borg Collective goes both ways folks.
#AYBABTU (All Your Base Are Belong To Us)
#tallship #despotism #dystopian #authoritarianism
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This is really messed up stuffs...
I call it despotic overreach via subjugation through state sponsored industrial surveillance systems.... It has nothing to do with capitalism but rather, that thing that Thomas Jefferson gave us... you know, the thing.
Been to a grocery store lately? You've been complaining for decades now, that they artificially inflate the prices of items so that they can offer you steep discounts on a rotating list of them - If, and only if, you consent to being a "club member". Personally, I've consented many a times; Rite-Aid, Albertson's, Wallgreens, CVS,Von's, and many others, as Brittney Spears, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin, and even John Rambo, another obvious #nom_de_guerre to combat what would follow as spam but worse, industrial surveillance and privacy mining (of course, you also need to use a fake phone number and a /dev/null email addy).
Have you tried to buy things at Jack in the Box or 7/11 or Mcdonald's lately? ... They have an app for that. Why do you suppose that is? They could just as easily and more efficiently deliver their content via PWS/webapps through your regular browser experience (they don't want to be counter-measured with uBlock Origin or integrated anti-tracking measures on the more sensible web browsers).
They're working really hard to deliver you to evil. I walked into a Smart & Final the other day and saw an unbelievable price for a 30 pack of Natural Light Beer - you had to use a "digital coupon" (just like you do at 7/11 to pay the regular, competitive price for an item). I asked the cashier where in their weekly rag the "digital coupon" was located, and she informed me that one needs to install an app to be eligible for the discount. Fuck that noise. Homey don't play dat.
China has WeChat ... Resistance is Futile.
When you install an app, it's a whole different ballpark of invasiveness, intrusions, data farming, and privacy mining, it's like it's your first day in #Pelican_Bay and you announce that you're going to drop the soap as you shower.
So the next time someone says, "Thank you for shopping at Walmart!", or synonymously, "Go Fuck Yourself", just smile, and offer, "Yes, there's an app for that".
What follows below in the #boost I've shared, that so inspired me to address this issue, is not a simple inconvenience - it's a new beginning :p In #Communist_Red_China, you do everything on your #WeChat app - you submit your elementary school homework, you buy stuffs at the local market, you inform on yourself and your friends to their state equivalent of the #Stazi, and you tell them exactly where to come and arrest, perhaps even disappear you. #Falun_Gong? Healthy? awesome! Now your a live organ donor too - you can thank #Meg_Whitman for that one.
You have been assimilated 🖖
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
#tallship #Sunnyvale_Syndrome #Industrial_Surveillance #Privacy_Mining #Data_Farming #Tracking #Despotism #AYBABTU h/t to @gabriel for bringing this to us via his #LibreSolutions_Network
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