I #StandwithSyria

Posted: March 15, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/15/2014

The Syrian conflict recently turned three years old. The anniversary has been marked around the world with #StandwithSyria gatherings and candlelight vigils. The anniversary has been marked in Syria with continued genocide against the civilian population by the military of Bashar Al-Asaad. The conflict in Syria is one in which the numbers speak for themselves.

When did the conflict begin? March 6th, 2011.

How did this situation start? The government/military opened fire on peaceful protestors. It is as if Obama/Bloomberg sent the army into Occupy Wall Street with shoot to kill orders.

What caused the protests in the first place? A gathering protesting the release of political prisoners in Deraa, Syria. Military/security personnel opened fire and killed 15 people. Both the protesting and the executing of civilian, peaceful protesters continued to escalate.

Where is the conflict at now? Civil war with each sides allies propping up each side with military and economic aide. Asaad’s allies are Iran and Russia. The resistance’s allies would be the US and EU.

Why hasn’t the US, EU, or UN intervened directly? That is the big question. There is no answer that doesn’t involve bias, cynicism, skepticism, or posturing. With those numbers it is hard to fathom the some western power getting in there. The closest any western power has gotten is the US threatening to go in if Asaad didn’t turn over all of his chemical weapons. He presently is, so the US has stayed on the sidelines. Reasons commonly cited are a lack of oil, direct US interests, threat of a proxy war with Russia and/or Iran, and the vast size of the country making a ground war even more of a rabbit hole than Iraq or Afghanistan.

I am for a military intervention for the first time in my life. I really do believe that with those numbers the US should send in troops. Just my opinion, I wouldn’t argue it. I just know that we have gone in other places for far less. I read a news story about Syria usually every day. Because every day there is something just gut wrenching to report. There have been multiple chemical weapon attacks against civilians, though the US will only acknowledge one. Those numbers at the very least grab anyone’s attention more often than not followed by sympathy for those in the trenches.

Save the Children is a good charity to give to if you are able to. Islamic Relief USA is a good charity for a variety of reasons.

Syria is one of the few news events in my lifetime that always makes me stop and think whenever I see something about it. Something like that going on in the world I live in at the same time as social media and Starbucks. Bosnia, Iraq, 9/11, Obama becoming president…none of those grabbed my attention as much as the first time I heard about it three years later. Syria does, I’m not sure why. I’ll still pay attention and try to help in the little way(s) I can, and I hope you will too.

#China’s Great Wall of Recession

Posted: March 15, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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by @anarchyroll
3/14/2014

China’s influence on the global economy is well documented. If you don’t know what it is; since the mid 1990s China has basically become the straw that stirs the drink that is the global economy. Why? After all Europe as a whole and the United States are technically bigger players with more liquidity in the markets.

The reasons are how much money has been moving into China because of their precedent busting annual economic growth rates, in addition to their purchasing of US government debt. All major international economic players have been investing in China two decades, and they basically own the United States the way a bank owns your mortgage or your credit card debt. China is the world economic HBIC whether people like to admit it or not, and they don’t.

They don’t like admitting it, but they’ll put their money there. Manufacturing, real estate, consumer goods purchases, GDP, and every economic indicator in China has been going one direction since the Clinton administration, up…until now.

To maintain their status of belles of the ball in addition to maintain what has appeared to be unmaintainable growth rates, China’s government has essentially been cooking the books to make their economy look stronger than it actually is. Ironically their downfall may be identical to the downfall of the US economy circa 2008, real estate.

Last season on VICE on HBO, the ghost cities of China were explored and showcased in crystal clear high-definition for the world to see. The Chicago Tribune recently did a feature on Chicago architecture firms building skyscraper after skyscraper in an architectural arms race in the new metropolises of China. The very well researched and written article showed the highlights and low lights of the urban migration of the Chinese population. Some of those low lights included more ghost buildings, ghost towns, unemployment, and environmental problems.

The economic numbers on paper aren’t matching up with the physical reality of the external world. Wow, I guess China is becoming more like the US every day. I kid, I kid, they are actually becoming more like Japan every day by taking steps very similar to that of the Lost Decade.

The other economic catastrophe shoe may be getting ready to drop. Although GDP growth grew, it is at its slowest pace in 15 years. Manufacturing and trade are both down, two cornerstones of China’s economic darling status. The only things that are sharply moving up are industrial bankruptcies and inflation.

If you’re still reading you’re probably wondering why you should give a shit. The answer to that is simple. If China goes into a recession or depression, so does the rest of the first world because anyone who invests has money tied up in China.  If a run on the bank occurs in China, what is to stop them from doing a margin call on the US debt they’ve been purchasing since the 90s? And if that happens, what exactly happens?

It may not be time to move all of your money into canned tomato soup and shotguns…yet. But it looks more and more like buying American may not just be for cars and furniture anymore. It might be time for anyone with a mutual fund to make sure their assets aren’t being remedied with any eastern medicine.

What the Hell is Going on in #Venezuela?

Posted: March 14, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/13/2014

The situation in the Ukraine has been getting a lot of press, and justifiably so. A potential hot war involving Russia has implications as far reaching as it gets in the political and violence realm. While the situation in the Ukraine has been deteriorating since December, another situation involving civil unrest and government instability has been brewing in Venezuela. In February, the unrest boiled over.

Political unrest in Venezuela has been going on for some time. The unrest that has been boiling over in the streets of Caracus has been brewing for over a decade while now Hugo Chàvez was still alive. Chàvez’s successor, current President Nicholàs Madura won a very close, very disputed election in the spring of last year. He came into office during an economic depression in which food, milk, and other essentials such as toilet paper are in short supply across the entire country.

The situation has boiled over in the last several months. According to Al Jazeera a female student claimed was sexually assaulted, causing a wave of protests to begin. Why? Rape is bad, but protests of sexual assault don’t usually lead to violent protests that put a government on the brink of collapse. According to The New Republic, the university had been asking the government for better security for over a year to combat rampant crime in the area.

In the eyes of the majority of the people of Venezuela, the government is unable to provide them with food, water, shelter, employment, or safety. The sexual assault at ULA’s Táchira in San Cristóbal sent the boiling water frothing over the edge.

February 4th is when the protests started. February 13th is when they turned violent. How? Why? By whom? Has been disputed in so many conflicting reports I honestly can’t say. From what I’ve gathered by the data I’ve read, it would seem that the protesters pushed a little too hard, and the police/military used deadly force to push back. The human condition always wins out no matter how civil we think we are.

Since the protests turned violent a month ago 50 people have died. Madura has ordered all US diplomats out of the country claiming the US is involved in a conspiracy against his Socialist Party along with the far right party members of Venezuela. The leader of the protest movement Leopoldo Lopez turned himself into police. The charges against him have been reduced from terrorism to arson but President Madura continues to call the college aged protestors terrorists. Bashir Al-Assad of Syria says the same thing of the protesting civilians of his country where his military has killed 100,000 civilians in the past three years.

In Venezuela; the economic depression continues, the political unrest continues, the protests continue, the violence continues. There is no end in sight, there are no simple answers. Surprised? Well, welcome to Post 2008 1st World Earth.

#Imgur Shows Social Media is #Photography

Posted: March 13, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/12/2014

I used to be an antisocial type. I can still remember my friend Sam’s girlfriend at the time nagging me nonstop until I created a My Space account in 2006. I did it to get her to stop asking me about it, but I am glad she did.

Antisocial is just a modern, glossy word for coward. Too scared to put oneself on the line outside of their comfort zone in front of strangers for fear of being judged or exposed as something other than the image they have crafted of themselves in their own mind/ego.

My social muscles were undeveloped. I am still catching up to my peers all these years later. Making new friends, business contacts, and romantic partners has been at a minimum half again as hard as it is for the average able minded person. Social media has helped with this. It is like giving someone a digital business card for your personal life. That is what I always enjoyed about social media and still do.

I started making friends late, I started dating late, I joined My Space late, I joined Facebook late, I joined Twitter late. I joined Instagram the day it became available for Android. I had a friend who introduced me to Instagram at her house one night after her Oscar’s party. I scrolled through it on her iPhone and remember talking about how the app looked like the future of social media. She agreed, saying she barely used Facebook anymore after getting on Instagram when it was still #iPhoneonly.

It turns out we were both right, and weren’t nearly the only people thinking those thoughts. Social media is now completely dominated by pictures and video aka photography. If you aren’t actively taking and posting pics and videos on your social media account(s) you have already been left behind and are merely a bystander rather than a producer in the social media world whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.

The social stars are  Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Vine, Flickr, Pinterest, and the latest and greatest darling of the World Wide Web 2.0, Imgur. I thought Imgur was merely the Reddit GIF maker/host but it turns out they are much more. Bloomberg/Businessweek wouldn’t do a story about them if they weren’t.

77 million unique visitors per day uploading 1.5 million image files while spending an average of 10 minutes on the site when they stop by. Those numbers mean they’re the current HBIC in social media and may be next on the queue to be bought by Yahoo. Imgur is pronounced Imager. There’s no A in there for the same reason so many apps end in just R instead of ER. Imgur is also ground zero for cats taking over the internet in the last two years along with YouTube.

The evolution of social media from text to visual images and video was inevitable. As we went from newspaper to radio to movies/television. Social media becoming dominated by pics & video is also being mirrored in SMS. As text messages are already a relic in the era of Snapchat, KIK, and WhatsApp. Human beings prefer visual stimuli and that is why animated emoticons shall inherit the Earth.

Dean Ambrose Calls out US Indy #Wrestling Scene

Posted: March 11, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/11/2014

In a recent episode of Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast, Dean Ambrose called out the United States independent pro wrestling scene for a couple of things. Each of which was both right, justified, and long overdue. Before he was Dean Ambrose in the WWE he was Jon Moxley on the Indy scene. Jon Moxley was the best thing going on the Indy scene for a solid year, if not two. He was a regular in DGUSA, Evolve, and was champion in CZW amongst many, many others. If there is anyone this side of 2010 who is qualified to talk about the US Indy scene this side of 2009 it is Jon Moxley/Dean Ambrose. Ambrose raised the following issues/points;

  1. The Indy scene has too many mark promoters and too many mark wrestlers/talents.
  2. The fans and wrestlers of the Indy scene are too egotistical about the information about the wrestling business they read on the internet and therefore feel authoritative about.
  3. The Indy scene has too many championships/title belts.
  4. The Indy scene is full of wrestlers who are too stiff
  5.  The Indy scene is full of wrestlers who don’t sell the impact of the strikes and maneuvers they perform on each other therefore making what they do look more fake and unrealistic than the business of pro wrestling is by nature.

Ambrose is spot on in each point he raised. He is not just another worker, he was a highly successful Indy scene performer who based on his excellence received a contract from the WWE in less than half a decade of his debut. That time frame is the exception, not the rule. Dean Ambrose is an exceptional talent and an authority on the US Indy scene. Here is why I think he was right in each point that he raised at the Cabana Compound.

  1. Promoters and wrestlers are marks by nature. If they weren’t marks, they wouldn’t be in the business. The problem is when the inmates run the asylum, chaos ensues. A state of chaos is an apt and accurate way to describe any and every Indy promotion that isn’t called ROH, PWG, or AAW. Wrestlers are supposed to be marks for themselves at least a little bit. Ego and creative success are intertwined. But the promoters need to be a check and balance, not an enabler. The fact that everyone wants to run their own ship shows that the promoters are bigger marks than businessmen. There should be no more than ten Indy wrestling promotions in the US. Three on each coast and six throughout the Midwest, South, and Great Plains.
  2. If you think the fans of the Indy scene aren’t too smart marky for their own good, then you haven’t been to an Indy show in the US in at least eight years.
  3. If you don’t think the Indy scene has too many title belts, then you haven’t been to an Indy show in the US in at least ten years.
  4. The wrestlers being too stiff means they are either too big of marks for their own good or are not properly trained or both and these days on the Indy scene it is usually both.
  5. If you don’t think the Indy scene has a problem with a lack of selling, lack of believability, lack of pacing, and lack of logic in the matches; you haven’t been to a US Indy show in the last six years. Davey Richards got scapegoated for this but he was merely a product of his environment. I could list all the culprits, but then this would be a long form piece. I understand why this has become so pervasive. To tell you the truth, I prefer matches like this to the 80s style rest hold fest that legends and fresh out of academy newbies have on the Indy scene. The problem is that it has run its course and like hardcore wrestling before it, should now be saved for storyline/feud climax matches.

Indy wrestlers would do themselves individually and the business as a whole a favor by dedicating themselves to forming their creative characters and physical bodies to be larger than life as opposed to how many super kicks and clotheslines they can fit into the last five minutes of a match. And for those who don’t care about character development or joining a gym, they should really focus on making their matches as close to a mixed martial arts contest as possible without stiffing the hell out of each other. It’s 2013, not 1987 or 1999. Be either larger than life or relevant to the current cultural landscape not a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an archetype from the 1960s.

Dean Ambrose is an exceptional talent but what got him into the WWE is not once in a generational, freak talent/ability. If you watch his non death matches from the Indy scene, he is having logical, believable matches. Strikes, submissions, and maneuvers are all in balance. His promos are unique to his character, a character that is unique to him. Ambrose/Moxley is a prototype for anyone out there who wants to be a wrestler in this day and age. He really is. If you are stupid enough to think you shouldn’t be studying old school wrestlers and matches, study him. He has “it”. He certainly is my favorite wrestler of this new generation that is coming up in WWE and the Indy scene this side of 2010.

Every wrestler currently on the Indy scene with no immediate hope of being signed by WWE, which is the vast majority, would be wise to heed his words and study his success.

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