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Facebook: Wall Street of the Internet?

Feb03
2012 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
Facebook: Wall Street of the Internet?

Isn’t Facebook really just the Wall Street of the Internet?

Originally designed to guarantee human communication under catastrophic conditions, specifically a massive nuclear strike that say, took out the Midwest, and San Francisco still could communicate with New York by way of Dallas instead of Chicago. The Internet was solely designed for worst case scenarios like that. No off switch. Though the 1% is working on that as we speak.

Lots of people love Facebook and in many ways it is the answer to the isolation of industrial society. It helps you keep up with friends and relatives and others around the world and people actually do benefit from this. At the same time, your data is being handled in a way that exposes it to corporate entities that may or may not have your best interests in mind. Law enforcement never imagined that people would willingly put so much data about themselves online. In essence, Facebook is social engineering on a massive level. Your creditors may follow you and your family “friending” them and then harassing them in an effort to get pressure to bear upon you and your obviously deadbeat ways for instance… Or maybe someone doesn’t like your politics and FB makes it easy for your detractors to find and infiltrate your local OWS group organizing and occupying within your local community. Not that I worry about that, they’re the 99% too, they just don’t know it.

So, while there are many people that do benefit from this closer interaction there is a huge downside risk involved. I’ve long said that you should post pseudonymous or anonymous for security reasons and that anonymity is a protested right for a very good reason. Meanwhile, there is talk about an Internet ID meaning no more anonymous… sorry, not likely to happen, but those ID’s will be vulnerable and will no doubt fall prey to those that are able to continue hacking from within the system.

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Posted in Anonymity, Anonymous, Capitalism, Civil Rights, computers, corporatism, Fascism, Internet, Science & Technology, software - Tagged , , , , , ,

Occupy: Moving Beyond Common Cause

Jan31
2012 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
Occupy: Moving Beyond Common Cause

The other day I was on a thread on FB that someone had posted a video that drew a correlation between the drug war and the race war calling the disparity in sentencing for blacks effectively “the modern Jim Crow”. So, in the argument, someone said: “Your rights end at my nose” and I couldn’t quite stop thinking about it. Here are my observations regarding that.

Solidarity to me means (and the United States is a union) that we look at each others issues and embrace them as if they were our own because it is our brothers or sisters fight and we work together always or we lose that right. Instead of trying to find only that piece of ground that we can all agree upon, solidarity goes beyond just finding common cause. You cannot protect your own unique perspective upon your rights without also arguing for those rights as they are perceived by your fellow human beings.

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Posted in Addiction, Civil Rights, corporatism, Culture Wars, Democracy, democrats, Drug War, Economy, Education, Equality, Fascism, Housing, Human Rights, Income Disparity, Marijuana, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Politics, poverty, Progressive Values, Racism, republicans, right wing, Unemployment, War, Workers Rights - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Anonymunity: the Internet’s Immune System

Jan27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
Anonymunity: the Internet’s Immune System

Why I Have Real Hope That The Occupy Wall Street Movement Will Change Everything: Anonymous

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Posted in Anonymity, Anonymous, Civil Rights, computers, corporatism, Democracy, Fascism, Internet, Politics - Tagged , ,

Occupy the Workers Coop?

Jan08
2012 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
Occupy the Workers Coop?

These are just ideas for how we might functionally get something real done, have jobs, invade normally corporate places with our open source, decentralized methodology, and have some fun building cool stuff for the world!

We should build our items / products using the worker owned model, open source the design so people don’t actually have to buy them if they can build it out of locally sourced materials and are economically challenged. Consider it just part of the climate debt payment the developed world owes to the people of the world most hurt by climate change. We could also reduce the cost based upon our own decision at the time to build some stuff for people that really need it, basically make it by donation and help them find funding if necessary.

In the price of every item sold, I’d like to give a unit away to the occupy movement worldwide as well as to our own local communities. Developing nations buy almost half of the solar power production capacity of the earth. Our market is potentially global. We can work with local communities about developing funding, perhaps even eventually forcing Mid American Energy to assess the cost of developing new electricity when they claim to need it and forcing them to admit that saving electricity by helping the community develop off the grid modular solar units it is a much cheaper, smarter solution than building a new coal fired power plant which run around 6 cents per kilowatt hour. Insulating homes was 3 cents per kilowatt hour in California so the law said they had to insulate peoples homes instead. Win win. With a small modular design, your bill is lower, your lights don’t all go off in a power outage and Mid American Energy still would have “new” power to resell at a profit.

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Posted in Capitalism, Civil Rights, Community Development, corporatism, Culture Wars, Democracy, Economy, Education, Energy, environment, Green Building, green technology, Jobs, Labor, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Renewable Energy, Science & Technology, Sustainability, Unemployment, Workers Rights - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Occupy Iowa: Caucus for “UNCOMMITTED”!

Jan01
2012 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
Occupy Iowa: Caucus for “UNCOMMITTED”!

Share Wide…Fellow 99 percenters:

Every four years, both major parties begin their Presidential nominating season in Iowa. On the evening of January 3rd, Republicans will go to their local precinct locations to caucus. Democrats will also go to precinct locations to caucus that night. It is a chance for Iowans to have their voices heard on the Presidential candidates and to begin the process that will select delegates to both national party conventions.

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Posted in corporatism, Democracy, democrats, Fascism, libertarians, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Politics, republicans, right wing, Uncategorized - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Occupy Wall Street is Not The Ron Paul Campaign

Dec24
2011 1 Comment Written by badweather
Occupy Wall Street is Not The Ron Paul Campaign

There is a peak about to occur (Iowa Caucus time!) in the trolling of Occupy Wall Street sites by Ron Paul supporters. After that He and Iowa will both be falling into the dustbin of history for political irrelevance. Iowa has it’s own reasons but Ron Paul, trying to tout his “Revolution” is all talk and no walk and part of the failed system destroying the world. I know without even going into all the details of his dog whistle racism politics, just looking at Ron Pauls donor list I can see he doesn’t represent me.

The following quote was pulled from an Occupy Wall Street page off a thread in a closed group (so don’t bother looking for it) that is supposed to be entirely free of political campaigning. My response I thought, was worth repeating so I’ve re-posted it up here. There are a lot of Ron Paul supporters out there and some of them are my friends. Not all of them understand the power of not endorsing candidates so perhaps sharing this will clarify things…

I want make it clear. I support the Bill of Rights. I want to see it restored as our form of Government. There is only one credible candidate [Ron Paul] that supports and has supported the Bill of Rights. If we cannot agree, well….. what is the point? Who Supports the Restoration of the Bill of Rights?

This was my reply:

This thread you started is not at all about the bill of rights. Very clearly this thread is in support of Ron Paul as the “one and only credible candidate that supports and has supported the Bill of Rights.”

Your insisting upon equating support for Ron Paul as not only synonymous with supporting the bill of rights but the one and only option and suggesting that not supporting Ron Paul is synonymous with not supporting the bill of rights is the argument of an absolutist. It leaves you and your opponent no room to compromise since their view is beneath contempt. They just become non bill of rights supporting losers. Or at least that’s how what you said sounds to me. I guess we don’t like the bill of rights? This is not a logical conclusion. It is your opinion that the only credible candidate is Ron Paul. Nothing more.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Democracy, Hate machine, Human Rights, libertarians, Occupy Illinois, Occupy Iowa, Occupy Quad Cities, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Politics, propaganda, right wing - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Death of Habeas Corpus, or How Obama forced Me Out of the Democratic Party Forever

Dec16
2011 Leave a Comment Written by badweather
The Death of Habeas Corpus, or How Obama forced Me Out of the Democratic Party Forever

Ok, let me get this straight…

Barack Obama, is a professor of constitutional law, who spent significant time on civil rights projects galore and then once in office did the exact opposite in most cases of what he said he would do. I could live with most of it because I thought deep down inside you were ok, and just dealing with really stupid obstructionism. But with this odious, freedom eating bill the National Defense Authorization Act , truly comes the death of the Republic in America. We have now taken the final turn to fascism, the death of Habeas Corpus which is the very cornerstone of personal freedom, and my gloves are officially coming off.

President Obama, I’m calling you out on this.

You can not claim ignorance on this matter. You of all people should know better than to cede the civilian right to due process to military tribunals using language so vague just about anyone could be regarded a terrorist if it so suited local “officials” or local special interests.

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Posted in Civil Rights, corporatism, Democracy, democrats, Equality, Fascism, Human Rights, Occupy Illinois, Occupy Iowa, Occupy Quad Cities, Occupy Wal Street, OWS, Politics, republicans, right wing, Workers Rights - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Frank Luntz is Afraid of Occupy Wall Street

Dec08
2011 Leave a Comment Written by badweather

Frank Luntz is doing his best to help the 1% brand Occupy as all about the left. It isn’t. It is going well beyond that. Most independents also agree with the idea that we’re all in this together and we want a government that works for everyone, not just the 1%. And the kids are just sick of this BS.

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Posted in Equality, Framing, Hate machine, Income Disparity, Jobs, Labor, Occupy Illinois, Occupy Iowa, Occupy Quad Cities, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, Progressive Values, propaganda, Protest, right wing, Unemployment - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Militarize Domestic Skies?

Dec05
2011 4 Comments Written by badweather
Militarize Domestic Skies?

Should We Militarize Our Domestic Skies?

It was a rainy afternoon for the first Occupy Iowa regional General Assembly. Around 100 occupiers gathered from various places across Iowa primarily to attend the action planned by Occupy Cedar Rapids protesting Air Cover Integrated Solutions possibly moving into the Cherry Building in Cedar Rapids, IA. The buildings owner welcomed us and our debate initially but seemed concerned with our presence. The confusing thing for everyone seemed to be that we just didn’t think that a building, currently the home to many small artist and craft shops, would be a good place to kick off the militarization of our domestic skies here in Iowa.

While we were speaking with the buildings owner, he mentioned that people couldn’t get through so we parted for the patrons which were coming and going as one might expect, it being an open house after all. We conversed for about 20 minutes with the owner and asked him to please not allow the drone facility to become part of his building.

After the mic check on Air Cover and our brief debate the police announced that we needed to move to the north side of the street which we did. While we were there for the next 35 minutes or so we saw the bus come by and drop some patrons off, some of the people riding the bus gave us the thumbs up.

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Posted in Capitalism, Community Development, corporatism, Democracy, Equality, Fascism, Jobs, Labor, News, Occupy Iowa, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Peace, Politics, Protest - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Scott Olsen Speaks With Rachel Maddow

Dec02
2011 Leave a Comment Written by badweather

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Posted in News, Occupy Iowa, Occupy Quad Cities, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Politics
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