(Part 2) Top products from r/anonymous

Capitalism isn't evil, it's amoral. The government? Now there's a necessary evil for you.

Speaking of which, last week I read a devastating book about what a hypocritical shitbag Seneca was; I'd always considered him one of my intellectual heroes but it turns out he's just like the rest of us. Absolutely extraordinary how nothing ever changes. In his honor, I hung this picture in my home office...his expression says it ALL. lol

The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca

>By any measure, Seneca (4BC-65AD) is one of the most important figures in both Roman literature and ancient philosophy. He was the most popular writer of his day, and his writings are voluminous and diverse, ranging from satire to philosophical "consolations" against grief, from metaphysical theory to moral and political discussions of virtue and anger. He was also the author of disturbing, violent tragedies, which present monstrous characters in a world gone wrong. But Seneca was also deeply engaged with the turbulent political events of his time. Exiled by the emperor Claudius for supposed involvement in a sex scandal, he was eventually brought back to Rome to become tutor and, later, speech-writer and advisor to Nero [...] Suspected of plotting against Nero, Seneca was condemned and ultimately took his own life in what became one of the most iconic suicides in Western history.

>The life and works of Seneca pose a number of fascinating challenges. How can we reconcile his bloody, passionate tragedies with his prose works advocating a life of Stoic tranquility? Furthermore, how are we to reconcile Seneca the Stoic philosopher, the man of principle, who advocated a life of calm and simplicity, with Seneca the man of the moment, who amassed a vast personal fortune in the service of an emperor seen by many, at the time and afterwards, as an insane tyrant? In this vivid biography, Emily Wilson presents Seneca as a man under enormous pressure, struggling for compromise in a world of absolutism. The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca thus offers us, in fascinating ways, the portrait of a man with all the fissures and cracks formed by the clash of the ideal and the real: the gulf between political hopes and fears, and philosophical ideals; the gap between what we want to be, and what we are.

Actually, nobody should be afraid of anyone.

Most politicians are good people, and they joined politics because they wanted to change the world for the better. But they got stuck in the debt-based system. Just like everybody else. This leaves very little room for real change.

Everybody wants out of this system. But most don't realise, or don't know how.

Perhaps you've seen Oliver Stone's Nixon. There's this scene where president Nixon meets a bunch of young people, and they give him shit for Vietnam etc. He then realises that he was just like those kids twenty years prior, but once in office he simply wasn't left with much choice - he had to act like he did, that's what the system required him to do. (Stone's message, not mine - although I agree.)

Nobody is out to get us right now, nobody is our enemy, everybody realises that the banking system is shit at best, or downright evil at worst. Including most politicians. All we need is a way out.

Recommended books:

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Good-Evil-Economic-Gilgamesh/dp/0199767203

http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395901&sr=1-1&keywords=debt

http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395926&sr=1-1&keywords=currency+wars

And please read these articles:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-30/bitcoin-the-perfect-schmuck-insurance.html

http://rt.com/op-edge/bitcoin-money-future-fad-761/

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125309437931677.html

Awesome, thanks for posting the quotes. I really should read the whole thing.

If I may add a couple of additional sub-topics for discussion:

1. In We Are Anonymous, there was something about deception among the participants in DDoS's. IIRC, it said that some of the DDoS attacks would have been mostly or completely ineffective without the participation of a couple specific people who had botnets. So the majority of Anons who participated and thought they were the ones taking down the sites were just (at best) wasting their own computer resources and (at worst) putting themselves at risk of arrest for no reason. Is a protest still a protest if the target isn't affected by the protester?
   
   
2. How about this scenario:
   
   >Carder-pretending-to-be-Anon: Hey, let's all DDoS this bank website in support of Occcupy Wall Street!
   
   >Anons: *DDoS bank website
   
   >Carder: *chuckles Lol, dumb skiddies! *hacks in while bank is distracted by DDoS, steals customer information
   
   >Bank: We've been DDoS'd and hacked by Anonymous!
   
   >LE: Anons, you're under arrest!
   
   >Anons: But it was a social protest!
   
   >Carder: *Heh heh *enjoys $$$$$$*
   
   Should the Anons have any liability for being gullible skiddies?