Archive for the ‘Anarchy Journal Constitutional’ Category

#CancelColbert shows #TwitterActivism is Social Media’s Tooth Fairy

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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MM@C4Logo1ajclogo2cancel-colbert-response

by @anarchyroll
4/9/2014

Remember the #CancelColbert fuss? Yeah, me neither.

What do the Tooth Fairy, Twitter Activism, and the happy women from tampon commercials all have in common?

None are real. They are all constructions of our imaginations, advertising campaigns, and ego not necessarily in that order.

The difference between Twitter activism and actual activism is the difference between playing sports video games and playing sports. One can be done sitting on one’s ass, sober or stoned while the other requires physical movement, discipline, practice, organization, and the concentrated effort of a group of people to manifest something into existence in the physical world.

Twitter activism is a joke. Even real activism that was spurred by Twitter like the Egypt uprising has proven to be futile as what we have seen in Egypt for the last three years is the same as the last 40; military coup, military rule, repeat.

Activism also requires competence and a depth of understanding of something outside of reflecting anger and self loathing. Things that the founders of the #CancelColbert movement clearly lack. Not to mention being devoid of what satire is in theory or in practice.

The apology that the #CancelColbert crowd is looking for doesn’t come from the entertainer. They’re looking for apologies from;

  • The mean kids on the playground in their youth.
  • Insensitive coworkers during the adolescence.
  • The douchebags at their local bar from their early adulthood.
  • They have internal wounds and want someone to apologize to them, kiss them on their head, and tell them everything is going to be alright.

Well it’s not Stephen Colbert’s problem that these people were the victim of racism at some point(s) in their lives. Colbert says provocative, shocking, and controversial things in every segment, of every show he has done since he was a correspondent for the Daily Show.

The world can be a cold, hard, unforgiving place. More people have been wronged than allowed to live a pain-free existence. But pounding the social media firestorm drum isn’t going to make anything better. You want change? You better be prepared to spend all of your leisure time for the next half decade minimum trying to enact change one millimeter at a time in the physical world.

140 characters and a victim mentality? Neither mean shit to anyone of influence in this world.

Especially not to one of the funniest people in the history of television. Colbert didn’t give an inch, nor should he have. In the end all the #CancelColbert hullabaloo did was give him free publicity and advertising for his show. Two things which in turn help to insure that Colbert won’t be canceled any time soon. More publicity means more viewers means more advertising revenue means more Colbert Report for years to come.

So thank you #CancelColbert Nation. You have done your part to keep Colbert on the air, great work!

 

#WindEnergy Springs Eternal

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Frackishima
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frackishimalogo1ajclogo2

by @anarchyroll
4/9/2014

The largest state in the continental United States is getting 1/3 of its electricity from wind farms.

That is encouraging. It is hard to find encouraging stories in the environmental, climate change, clean energy field(s) these days. It’s not that the stories, facts, and events don’t exist. It’s that there is so much more bad news out there.

The fact that one of, if not THE most conservative, republican state in the country is also the biggest clean energy success story says something. The fact that the state where George W. Bush was a two term governor before he was a two term president is getting that much power from clean energy says a lot.

What does it say? That there IS hope.

Hope springs eternal…and so does renewable energy. That’s why it’s renewable.

If Texas can get behind clean energy in such a resounding way then any state can, outside of the confederacy at least.

#DataMining means #Privacy is so 20th Century

Posted: April 2, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/31/2014

Data mining and data brokers are two concepts that everyone who has a smart phone and/or uses the internet need to at least be aware of. One need not be an activist on the subject, but these are issues that effect you whether you care or not, know about them or not, are pro or con. If you are the type who is upset about the NSA bulk collection revelations by Edward Snowden, data mining and data brokers definitely need to be on your radar.

  • Who is mining our data? Traction, Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon and Experian are the big time data brokers. But there are literally thousands of these broker firms.
  • What is data mining? Data mining and data brokering is why email and social media are free. They are why you get a discount with a membership card at a grocery store, coffee shop, department store, etc. Our email addresses, likes, retweets, pins, reblogs, and purchases are monitored, collected, grouped, and sold in bulk to the highest bidder.
  • When is our data being mined? Any time we visit a website. Any time we log in to any online account with a registered email address. Any time we pay for something with a credit, debit, or gift card.
  • Where are these data mines? The headquarters/ server farms at the HQ of Google, Facebook, and the data brokerage firms listed above. Google and Facebook keep the information whereas the data brokers exchange and sell the information just as stocks, options, treasuries, etc are on Wall Street.
  • How is this done? Digitally/electronically through cookies in your web/ios browser(s), the networked computer the card swiper in the store is attached to…you get the idea.
  • Why is this worth knowing about and/or caring about? Because it is unregulated and most people don’t know that simply visiting a website is giving permission for your information to be raided, collected, and sold. Because our privacy is not just being violated, for those who use web browsers and smartphones, our privacy actually no longer exists.

The data mining industry is self-regulated. How did self-regulation work out for the meat-packing industry? Tobacco industry? Investment banking industry? Real estate industry?

60 minutes recently did a piece on data mining that is a must see for every internet user. The videos are short, easy to digest, informative, and unbiased. Including the journey to opt out of data collection and the easier, smaller steps we can all take to protect our privacy.

The billboards one sees when driving on a highway, have now replaced the road. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We were/are all naĂŻve to think that email, social media, and discounts at retailers came at no cost. The costs are our identities, habits, desires, physical location, history, age, sex, preferences, strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and failures. All the things we used to only tell our friends and family that we now post electronically for the entire world to see. The thing about that is, advertisers are part of the world too.

We have a right to privacy. A basic human right. Many people will be and are happy to give it away in exchange for what they get online and offline. But data mining is done in secret. Big data are obstructing congressional investigations into them. If what they are doing isn’t wrong, why the secrecy? Why the obstruction? Why decline interviews? Why not let people opt out?

And before you point the finger at the firms listed above, remember the biggest, baddest and OG of the data mining industry has been and always will be, Google.

Occupy Hope?

Posted: March 30, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logo

by @anarchyroll
10/19/2013

(I recently found this in my drafts section. Apparently I forgot to hit the send button last year.)

Ignorance is bliss says the ostrich with its head buried in the sand.  That is also a core principle of America’s middle class, don’t ask questions, just pay the mortgage.  This blind obedience and fear has bred generational conflict, the most obvious and colorful being the hippie revolution of the 1960s.  Occupy Wall Street hasn’t had the staying power as the hippies, mostly because the hippies grew up to be more selfish and greedy than their square parents could have ever imagined.  The infrastructure that the hippie turned yuppies put into place during the 1970s-80s were designed to suppress and silence rather than embolden and amplify the average person. The average person has in fact been rebranded as a second class citizen, in step with casino gambling being rebranded as the derivatives market.

During the Obama Hope era, another rebranding has occurred, journalism has been rebranded as espionage. More journalists have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 than every other previous president combined. Change we can believe in?  Well certainly for proponents of George Orwell’s 1984 becoming a nonfiction book it is.  People so blinded by red elephants and blue donkeys are so in the trenches of daily punditry that perspective and bigger picture of things has dissolved from their frames of reference.  Almost as if the job of pundits is to provoke the average person into debating with his/her peers rather than their superiors, elders, and elected officials.

The very reason that some people think the Occupy movement to be a failure is why it is a success.  Cynics I have talked to say they didn’t accomplish anything, often unaware there is an active branch still holding rallies and protests in their nearest major metropolitan city.  Occupy has connected the disenfranchised and given a worldwide platform to the voiceless.  Simply because the evening news doesn’t cover them, and the conspiracy theory forums tri labeled them, doesn’t mean the goals of the movement weren’t accomplished.

I could’ve swore that the initial goal of the people gathering in Zuccotti Park was to draw attention to inequality in terms of income and justice for those in the financial sector of America and its damaging effects at an unprecedented scale on the people, places, and things that make up 99% of the developed world.  Am I wrong?  Oh, they never stated an official, singular, vision or purpose? Well read between the fucking lines, or their blogs…whichever.

Inspiration via Devastation: Part 4: Glenn Greenwald & Edward Snowden

Posted: March 30, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
10/4/2013

(I recently found this in my drafts section. I guess I never hit the publish button last year.)

As I consumed more and more audio books on personal development, philosophy, self help, spirituality, and self actualization I believed less and less in conspiracy theories. As I aged I met more and more people who, as fictional character Don Draper said in the first season on Mad Men, are so desperate to be led, that they’ll follow anybody. The desperate need some people have, to believe that somebody is in control of everything. People cloak themselves in cynicism and sarcasm to mask their fear of mortality and of being too big a coward to even attempt to make a difference in the world. They justify their inaction to themselves by looking for and finding circumstantial evidence that there is a higher power, new world order, shadow government, etc pulling all the strings, in control of all things important. Therefore, why try? why protest? why write letters? why call congressmen? why not do anything other than work a job they hate so they can numb themselves with personal entertainment when “not on the clock”.

As I studied history however, I couldn’t shake the thought that there was a ruling class of wealthy land and resource owners that have continuously taken action in secret to maintain control of money, land, and resources. Learning about someone like Edward Bernays and the invention of the American middle class consumer by the economic ruling class at the turn of the 20th century, did not dissipate my said thought. Old money with a scarcity mentality fueled by paranoia and greed is one thing, the Military Industrial Complex along with the World Bank/IMF working in the shadows to rule the world Pinky and the Brain style just seemed too derived from a bunch of immature, overweight, uneducated men who don’t get laid enough if at all.

Edward Snowden was the Rosetta Stone for legitimacy to those who are paranoid of governmental overreach and privacy invasion. Glenn Greenwald, reporter for The Guardian newspaper has been Snowden‘s contact to the outside world. Information has continued to trickle out for over two months, each leak, has been an ocean of concern of shock, awe, concern, and outrage for anyone who values privacy, freedom (personal and/or of information), governmental transparency, and power. If you are reading this and unaware of who either Snowden or Greenwald are, please click the hyperlinks in this blog to educate yourself on who they are. Simply knowing their names is not enough. Knowledge itself is not power, it is merely the material to create power, or the vehicle to get you to power. You must use the material to formulate the power you wish to have, you must operate the vehicle to arrive at the power destination.

Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald’s bravery and journalistic heroism gets my blood pumping in a way that up until this point in my life, only professional wrestling could. That may read as lame as shit, but professional wrestling has been my biggest personal passion in life, for my entire life. When friends, family, teachers, lovers, and strangers would tell me to be realistic about what I wanted to do in my life, I turned to writing, I turned to journalism, I turned to media communications as a secondary career option. Snowden and Greenwald have given me as great a gift as I could possibly ask for. The consistent flow of positive emotions that lets me know that writing and journalism can give me a lifetime of fulfillment. That if I could never be a professional wrestler or more importantly, a successful one, that I could spend the rest of my life in journalistic pursuits, shining light on information kept from the public in the dark, and die a happy man.

I have spent so many years stagnant. Afraid to take action not only out of fear of failure, but out of the fear of taking the wrong path. Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden removed that fear from me. Ironically, by releasing some of the scariest nonfiction information I have ever seen, read, or heard of in my entire life. What the Obama administration is doing to whistleblowers is disgusting. What the NSA is doing is despicable. The surveillance state that the Patriot Act has allowed to formulate is un American. I have found my second passion in life. I have never cared about being rich, I have cared about being happy. I have read enough books from enough credible figures to know that happiness and wealth are not correlated. Beyond having food, shelter, cleanliness, and safety I don’t care for my destiny to be that of a mindless consumer.

I now know that I can be happy being a writer for the rest of my life. I know I can be happy being a journalist, a broadcaster, a radio dj, a talk show host, a producer, a managing editor, a columnist, an author, a staff writer, and any other position my college degree and my natural abilities make me qualified for because I now have the passion and desire to go with my BA and abilities. Edward Snowden’s leaks may have scared the hell out of me, but sometimes we need to be scared to wake the fuck up. I have been woken up. Glenn Greenwald‘s unapologetic journalistic integrity inspires me to the point of goose bumps literally every time I think of his interviews since the Snowden story broke. That is what it takes to get me moving in the direction of my dreams. Thanks to Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden not only am I moving, I want to, and feel obligated to keep moving.

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