On 02/14/2017 02:52 PM, John Young wrote:
ACLU has become primarily a money-raising endeavor, paying its staff extremely generous salaries and perks. It turns down requests which does not promise fund-raising prospects. In this it is like the Greenwalds who rush to promote very lucrative grants for high-profile projects. Check out the ACLU main site for its gold-plated campaigns and screeching about contributions.
This bankable version followed departure of long-time supporters repulsed by the greed and cozying up to wealthy donors. It ain't what it claims to be, and once was, maybe could be again if it dumped the sleases who chase media coverage like politicians, actually pursuing civil liberites spectaculars like ambulance-chasing lawyers. Far from being public defenders.
The org's alleged neutrality is bogus, it is tipped toward profitable non-profitibility, hardly alone in that, to be sure, ever ready to arrange tax write-offs for over-loaded dudes and dudettes, and in that way perfectly comfortable with governments who dispense privilege and civil liberties to those who never really challenge authority. Every government agency, corporation and NGO has a civil liberties policy as rancid as privacy and security.
Coda, few cypherpunks ever wrote code, those that did went on to better rewards in industry and government from which most came. The code mantra was an inside joke to get grunts to labor for free, even go to jail, since not many could qualify for ACLU expensive and exclusive standards,
ACLU comes in late after the CCR NLG and others have done the hard work, polishes the apple, takes all the credit, and uses it to fundraise. Their local chapters do as much as they can on a limited budget begging the regional for 'bigger guns' if needed and generally not getting the assistance. They are fan clubs and literature distributors. The thing that really irks me though is the NLG and CCR give kudos to the ACLU for their work but I'll be damned if I can ever remember any sort of reciprocal behavior. The NLG used to stalk the "Tombs" at 100 Centre St Manhattan criminal court after antiwar protests bailing people out, and if you asked them where to return to money to they'd say "Keep it" HAHAHAHA! I GUESS that's 'paying for protesters'... If you don't mind sitting in a literal human sewer with a cheeze sandwich of some yellow gummy shit on white 'bread' with umn... I think it was mayonnaise anyway... That's all you got until you were released, or 'housed' if you REALLY did something the cops didn't like... Rr
At 03:40 PM 2/14/2017, you wrote:
[partial quote follows]
"On February 1, Breitbart technology editor and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California-Berkeley. Students at the university protested his speech, and radicals—many of whom may not have been studentss—turned violent. "Yiannopoulos’ speech was canceled for safety concerns, as demonstrators <http://watchdog.org/287426/violence-censorship-berkeley/>threw rocks and fireworks at the building where the speech was set to take place. What began as a speech to 500 students expanded to thousands as the media (including this writer) wrote countless articles about the riots and Yiannopoulos. "If the Left wanted to shut Yiannopoulos down, <http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolling-playbook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/>they failed by behaving in such a manner that raised his profile. Who knows how many people wondered who this person was who caused such a backlash, and how many of those people then found at least some of what Yiannopoulos says to be acceptable? "In a <https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/civilities-why-milo-yiannopoulos-is-a-man-to-be-feared-its-not-what-you-think/2017/02/10/3bff3f8e-ef06-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html?utm_term=.ab05c2e09ed2>follow-up article on the riots, Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow spoke to a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, Lee Rowland. Rowland told Petrow that she finds much of Yiannopoulos’ speech to be “absolutely hateful an despicable—but those adjectives don’t remove his sspeech from the Constitution’s protection.†[end of partial quote] Jim Bell's comments follow: The ACLU is being correct, at least here. They were also attacked in the late 1970's, for standing up for the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. That march (which never actually happened) was humorously portrayed in John Belushi's movie, "Blues Brothers". <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0
(Head Nazi is played by actor Henry Gibson, perhaps most famous for the TV show, "Laugh-In". <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61ZJpMDBzU>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61ZJpMDBzU