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In less then a week, the University of Central Florida Knights for Socialism has held two anti-Trump events on campus.

On Friday, students got their chance to take a whack at a piata depicting the president at their Whack-a-Trump-Piata event.

The Knights for Socialism Facebook page for the event states, Angry? Afraid? Stressed? Come vent all that out with the Knights for Socialism this Friday on the Free Speech lawn in a celebration of the Mexican and Latino culture that makes America and Florida so great!

The event attracted a big crowd of students and faculty who saw what was going on and stopped to take a look.

You can tell on someones face that theyre republican and theyre taking a picture, or if someone is taking a picture and being like this is so funny, Chairman of the Knights for Socialism Dylan Tyer said.

Theres been no negativity by any means but definitely a lot of interest and a lot of good conversations with people. Thats all we are trying to do, build solidarity with the community and network with like-minded individuals, Tyer continued.

For the event, the club brought out Minion piatas and taped pictures of Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump to them. Each of the piatas were filled with candy, scantrons and past quotes from the three men.

I saw a really vengeful strike at Sessions, said Tyer.

That was interesting and you know its not hard to imagine why. This is a guy who liked the KKK until he found out they smoked marijuana so that tells you all you need to know about Jeff Sessions and what the student body might think of him, Tyer explained.

The UCF conservatives were not amused by the event, and felt that events like these lead to more problems on campus.

These types of events are certainly violent, College Republican Jarrett Cathcart said.

Bashing a piata of our president adds negatively to the already tense political climate, which exists even on campus. Its something that is meant to provoke people and spark conflict, Cathcart continued.

The Knights for Socialism have a very different opinion regarding whether the event was violent or not. If you think hitting a piata is inciting violence, then you need to open your eyes, because there is actual violence being committed against American citizens, being slaughtered by their own government in mass. So if you think this is violent, then I dont honestly care about your opinion, Tyer said.

Chairwomen of the College Republicans said,They have every right to express their opinions of disapproval of President Trump, however putting together an event to beat a piata with the Presidents face on it is out of line and totally disrespectful.

During the event, the Knights for Socialism collected money for a local charity, red aid and knights pantry. Red aid is a store where the less fortunate can get free clothing, toiletries, and other essentials. Knights for Socialism Treasurer Reinaldo Rivera said, we got a good amount of contributions, which is what this is for. The Knights for Socialism raised around 5 dollars and received some non-perishable food donations as well.

Read more here:
Knights for Socialism hold Whack-a-Trump-Piata event - KnightNews.com

Forbes

Socialism Is Bad Forbes I get a worrying sense that socialism is becoming cool again. You can see it all over social media where people brag about joining the Democratic Socialists of America, and in the popularity of the socialist magazine Jacobin. If Trump fails terribly, I ...

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Socialism Is Bad - Forbes

In 2015, Venezuela became one of the top 10 countries whose citizens overstayed their visas

Here at LI, weve been chronicling the abysmal failure of socialism as it plays out in Venezuela. The latest development sees starving and desperate Venezuelans flooding the US with asylum requests.

Fox News reports;

New data shows Venezuelans are leading asylum requests to the United States for the first time, as the middle class in the country are fleeing the crashing, oil-dependent economy.

The U.S. governments Citizenship and Immigration Services reported that 18,155 Venezuelans submitted asylum requests last year, a 150 percent increase over 2015 and six times the level seen in 2014.

. . . . In 2014 a large number of Venezuelans sought asylum following months of protests seeking to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

A large surge in applicants took place since late 2015 after the opposition took control of congress in a landslide election, giving hope to many that it could disrupt 17 years of socialist rule. Instead of reaching out to his opponents, Maduro retrenched and Venezuelans began to uproot as triple-digit inflation pulverized salaries and widespread food and medicine shortages made life unbearable for many.

A large number of the asylum seekers are middle-class Venezuelans who dont qualify for refugee status reserved for those seeking to escape political persecution, according to Julio Henriquez, director of the Boston-based nonprofit Refugee Freedom Program.

In addition to seeking asylum, many Venezuelans are overstaying their visas: According to the Department of Homeland Securitys estimate of visa overstays, Venezuela became one of the top 10 countries whose citizens overstayed their U.S. visas during the fiscal year in 2015.

Follow this link:
Socialism Fail: Venezuelans Lead In US Asylum Requests - legal Insurrection (blog)

Last Monday, my esteemed colleague Jason Hiner asked the question of whether fibre-to-the-premises broadband is a waste of resources as the next generation of wireless technologies appears on the horizon.

With the piece focusing on America, it failed to address the one option that those in the United States seldom want to bring up: Involving the government.

To overcome the lust of corporations to hit the next quarterly target by squeezing the very last dollar from ageing assets and instead roll out more future-proof technologies, a little government encouragement is needed in the form of monetary incentives or legislation.

Without this, private companies may be reluctant to use fibre-to-the-premises technology; when a carrier is sitting on decades of accumulated networks, processes, and systems, there will need to be a very good reason to throw them aside and start ramping up capital expenditure.

Google Fiber is one such reason, but even that upstart remained confined to the more profitable metropolitan centres and remained puny in landmass coverage terms.

There is no point in running down the path of smart infrastructure and digital interactions with authorities if the rural section of the community is stuck on outmoded systems, and governments can also enforce another important aspect to dealing with broadband on a societal level: Universality.

Broadband is a paradoxical beast once baseline speeds in double digits are attained as the benefits it can provide to society become proportional to the difficulty in reaching them, and this inversely impacts profitability.

Consequently, users end up in a situation where those who need it most often have to go without, or live with poor connections because it doesn't make economic sense to service them. Private companies will not willingly enter regional areas, because even if there is a very slim profit margin, it could take decades before the investment paid for itself.

Despite its switch from a 93 percent fibre-to-the-premises network to one that is officially "technology agnostic" -- which in essence means using cheaper and less future-proof fibre-to-the-node connectivity -- one thing the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) got right was using satellite to reach its object of universality by covering the final 3 percent of the population unable to be reached with fibre or fixed-wireless.

This establishes a connectivity baseline of 12/1Mbps for anyone in the country, regardless of how remote or isolated they may be. Once the entire country is hooked up to the NBN in the coming years, application developers will be able to make a connectivity assumption that, while not blindingly fast, should be stable and is a decent improvement on the ADSL speeds users have battled with for years. And in the coming years, it would be much more helpful if the government-controlled NBN abolished its 12/1Mbps tier for the much more useful 25/5Mbps baseline across all of its technology.

If you look around the world at countries comparably sized to Australia, no other nation is aiming to hit complete coverage of their population -- because reaching the last percent takes a couple of billion dollars, and in order to make the service affordable to satellite users, they need to be cross-subsidised by city users.

It's the sort of decision that a government can make, but a company will not touch with a barge pole.

Smaller countries with a higher percentage of fibre in their fixed-line rollout than Australia, such as New Zealand and Singapore, have a substantial amount of private funding, but it is unlikely the fibre footprint would be as large without the public money injected into these schemes.

There's no technical reason why the United States could not quickly find itself in a similar situation to many other Western nations and have a national broadband plan, except for the small matter that the US seems to have a pathological hatred of governments, and, in particular, government ownership.

It's at such a point that Virginia is reportedly looking into the prospect of municipal broadband being such an anathema that it must be banned if private companies offer 10/1Mbps or faster plans to 90 percent of a footprint.

Until such trends are reversed, there will always be a section of America that is left behind on communications.

Sometimes, you need a government to take foolhardy, economically questionable decisions that provide for a greater societal good precisely because it makes no sense on a balance sheet or in a quarterly earnings call.

But for those worried that Australia is about to become a hotbed of government ownership and export it across the world, fear not; we always planned to sell it off at some point and let someone else drive it into the ground.

Check back in a decade or so when we are complaining about NBN's new owners not investing in new equipment and gouging customers whenever possible. You'll feel right at home.

The Monday Morning Opener is our opening salvo for the week in tech. Since we run a global site, this editorial publishes on Monday at 8:00am AEST in Sydney, Australia, which is 6:00pm Eastern Time on Sunday in the US. It is written by a member of ZDNet's global editorial board, which is comprised of our lead editors across Asia, Australia, Europe, and the US.

Previously on Monday Morning Opener:

View post:
Proper fibre broadband is not a waste, but you need a little socialism to do it properly - ZDNet

Protesters nationwide have vowed to Bash the FASH in the wake of Donald Trumps controversial presidency, and in keeping with their promise, a spirited group of left wing social extremists at the University of Central Florida have taken the phrase literally. On Friday, UCFs Knights for Socialism gathered to physically bash President Donald Trumps face in, using baseball bats and inviting children to join in.

UCFs Knights of Socialism gathered at the universitys Orlando campus for their Whack-A-Trump event, where students could take a baseball bat directly to Trump and his Cabinet members' faces. The group is the same one that promoted a "Leftist Fight Club" on Super Bowl Sunday, which taught students how to fight Trump supporters.

Jacob Engels of the East Orlando Post recorded video footage of the event, which was shared exclusively with Sunshine State News Saturday morning.

The Knights organized the event to give students the chance to violently take out their anger and frustrations on the papier-mch containers.

Angry? Afraid? Stressed? Come vent all that out with Knights for Socialism this Friday on the Free Speech lawn in a celebration of the Mexican and Latino culture that makes America and Florida so great, read the events Facebook page.

The group printed out pictures of Trump, Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Knights then slapped the photos onto piatas and tied a rope over a tree branch, lifting the containers to the perfect height for passersby to take a swing.

At one point during the rally, Knights for Socialism leader Dylan Tyler takes a big whack at the piata, smashing it in half. Tyler delivers blow after blow on the piata as the crowd cheers him on.

Tylerjokes to call an ambulance to revive the lifeless Jeff Sessions.

Make sure the ambulance comes here a bit late, the Knights jeer.

UCFs newspaper said the event attracted a big crowd, but live video footage shows about a dozen students actually showed up.

At one point, the group appears to encourage a group of elementary schoolers on a tour to be part of the Trump bashing. /p>

The elementary schoolers beg the Knights to join in on the fun. Some children gleefully ask their teacher if they can "kill Donald Trump."

Show Donald Trump something! the kids shout. Hit him hard!

The children shout and clap as the piata falls to the ground. They scramble to seize the Twizzlers and other candy strewn across the lawn.

One of the protesters was also spotted wearing an"Antifa International" sweatshirt. Antifa is best known as the group behind the violent riots at the University of California's Berkeley campus.Conservatives have already organized a petition to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization for smashing windows and perpetuating a culture of fear through their protests. The Change.org petition had gathered over 65,000 signatures at the time of this article's release.

But dont get the wrong idea about the event, said Tyler. The Knights events are clearly positive, and according to Tyler, just a way to spread the word and find comrades to their common cause.

Theres been no negativity by any means, but definitely a lot of interest and a lot of good conversations with people, Tyler told KnightNews. Thats all we are trying to do, build solidarity with the community and network with like-minded individuals.

The group was organized last year in the midst of a controversial campaign season where Trump dominated the news cycles with his irreverent campaign tactics, controversial comments and a promise to shake up American politics. After Trump won the presidency in an historic upset, the Knights scrambled to organize an emergency F*ck Trump assembly where they talked about destroying Trump.

Engels, who obtained footage of the event, said he thought it was hypocritical for the Knights and other liberals to violently bash Trump.

"Imagine the outrage if this was done to President Obama," said Engels.

Conservatives attending the university agreed. College Republicans saidthey were offended by the event and questioned how it would mollify an already intense political climate.

Bashing a piata of our president adds negatively to the already tense political climate, which exists even on campus, said UCF College Republican Jarrett Cathcart. Its something that is meant to provoke people and spark conflict.

Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email atallison@sunshinestatenews.comor follow her on Twitter:@AllisonNielsen.

Read more:
UCF Socialist Club Urges Students, Children to Bash, 'Kill' Donald ... - Sunshine State News