THE SUPREME COURT must've like the RIGHTSIDEUP's design, because they've designed their own website after it.  Big Brother is watching.

Occupy Fails Again...

    
 A GOOD MARXIST NEVER LEARNS.  After WWI, Marx's theory of a world-wide communist take-over turned out to be kind of a flub.  Actually, it didn't happen at all.  Russia's revolution in 1917 was the most successful attempt at world-wide communism, but even that didn't really end well.
     After failing so many times, the Marxists are still trying to take over the world.  This time, it's in the form of Occupy Wall Street.  A recent panel discussion featuring top-brass commies and union bosses, asked the questions all Marxists ask when their revolutions fail: "What the heck happened, man?"
          Marxist theorists answered that question shortly after WWI.  People were happy with capitalism.  Their solution, then, was no to target the working-people, but different social groups.  Cultural Marxism.  The cancer of any great society. 
     Occupiers must have short memories, though, because they've come full circle to the dawn of Marxism.  They've abandoned the cultural Marxism that actually did work to destroy the fabric of a strong society.  They want to take down capitalism the old-fashioned way: by targeting the working class.  It didn't work before and most likely won't work now.
     However, the one thing Marxists are successful at is violence.  Revolutions have never been peaceful, and the coming Occupy movements aren't projected to be either.  David Graeber, one of the panelists said:

"It's a revolution, it didn't start here.  It started in Tunisia.  It travelled across the Mediterranean to Europe, to Spain, to Greece.  Now it's come here.  It's a world revolution we're experiencing."

     A man had to set himself on fire to start the revolutions that quickly spread throughout the world. 

     Luckily, capitalism is the preferred system for the common, sane person.  A violent attempt at revolution, and ending capitalism, will only more deeply root people's feelings for capitalism and, well, sanity. 

Are They Still Pigs? Photo Montage of Burning Cops and Angry Occupiers

     THE POLICE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE part of the 99% percent, according to occupiers at the dawn of the movement.  If you looked beyond CNN, MSNBC, or other mainstream news outlets, it was clear to see that anti-police feelings among protesters was high.  A quick Youtube search, or talking to any of the protesters would expose their views that the police aren't part of the 99%, something protesters claim when they're on the news.  Signs reading 'all my heroes kill cops', and people calling the police 'pigs', suggest the movement's dark underbelly of anti-policism.  Maybe 'police-aphobia'?
     Tensions escalated here in America when the NYPD arrested some 700 protesters for clogging up the Brooklyn Bridge.  In subsequent events, anti-police feelings grew, eventually coming to a head during the Occupy Oakland riots in November 2011, when an Oakland police tear gas canister struck combat veteran Scott Olsen in the head sending him to ICU.  This, or course, sparked total outrage among the already somewhat police-aphobic occupiers. 
     Occupiers have taken that rage, combined it with previous 'anti-pig' sentiment, and the result is F*** the Police day.  While it really didn't get off the ground, F*** the Police day should be an alarm for what might come during the Spring and Summer, considering Van Jones and Adbusters have promised even bigger and better plans than previous Occupy events. 
     If this is the course Occupy is already taking, it's hard to imagine a shift in support of the police.  In Greece, police are routinely attacked with rocks and Molotov cocktails.  The pictures of Greek policemen rolling on the ground while their head is on fire should at the very least raise the question, 'are cops really pigs?'

I don't own or didn't take any of these pictures:

Who Said What, Now?

Picture by Xavier Le Roy 

     ADBUSTERS IS GETTING CONFIDENT...AND MORE IDIOTIC.  Their latest article, 'Breaking the Chains of Modernity' written by Dustin Craun, bodly goes where Adbusters...well, usually goes.  This time, though, they've changed it up a bit.  The article is an homage to Eastern philosophy and is in total disdain for Western culture.  It seems to me this article is also not only a call for a shift in thought away from Western culture.  It is a call for a shift in thought to Islam, and an abandonment of the Judeo-Christian values at America's core.  
     The question becomes, then, is the author merely suggesting we look towards Eastern Philosophy, or will this suggestion be acted upon with force?  I fear that instead of a mere suggestion that we look towards a different ideology, this article foreshadows the kind of radical, forceful, and certainly not peaceful manner in which those at the core of the Occupy Wall Street movement have already called for a change in our culture.  I believe it was also an Eastern philosopher who said, "by their fruits, ye shall know them."

 References to Islam from the article:

"...we need to make what Walter Mignolo calls an “epistemic geopolitical move.  That demands a form of critique that is deeply engaged in what is known in Arabic as muhasabah, or self-examination..."

"As the Qur’an says, 'God does not change the condition of a people, until they change their own condition..."

"As the great Mystic philosopher Al-Ghazali put it in his masterwork of the inner sciences of Islam..."



*Side note: Now available from the anti-consumerist Adbusters store is the Teacher's Media Empowerment Kit.  Get yours today for a mere $125! 

     Wait a minute...can the 99% afford that?

Rule #1: Never Talk About Fight Club

     RULE #2: NEVER TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.  Modern generations of left-wing activists seem to be living in a sort of dream.  Their consumption of movies, the internet, and all things digital has taken their anti consumerist attitudes to a new extreme.  An article from Adbusters, the cream of the crop of anti consumerism, and ironically a magazine available for purchase, suggests that liberals might be taking their views farther outside the realm of reality. 
     The newest theory of liberal activists is that activism will become digitally organized in the form of games played in real life.  The theory of living your life as a game first started with the work of Guy Debord, who believed that by doing so, you could insight revolution.  McKenzie Wark took the theory further, and suggested that we already do live in a game called Capitalism.  Wark wrote his theory in his manifesto titled: Gamer Theory.  Adbusters liked that theory, and so we come to KillCap.
     KillCap is an activist video game meant to be played in real life.  Game play in KillCap is to level up by 'jamming' capitalist symbols.  "Walking away from Starbucks, defacing the golden arches, subverting American Aparrel's patriarchal advertising...a jammed billboard, an anti corporate prank, [and] hitting a capitalist in the face with a pie" are all ways to earn blackpogs, the game's currency and means to level up.  Wait a minute...completing actions in order to earn currency and level up?  Sounds a little bit like capitalism.  The objective of the game must be to 'culturejam' your way into the 1%.  The idea of KillCap, and other games along the same lines, is that by everyone witnessing culture jamming activities, people will think they look fun and want to do them too.  Eventually a Marxist revolution will occur.  In theory.  And so we come to Fight Club.
     The cult classic is perhaps a glimpse into what our country would look like if games like KillCap became popular.  Fight Club starts with one Tyler Durden, a Recall Coordinator who at the beginning of the movie does not know he is Tyler Durden.  Tyler Durden meets imaginary Tyler Durden in a bar and fights with him (but in reality beats himself up).  Eventually Tyler Durden and his imaginary friend, Tyler Durden, start a fight club which grows into a national network of fight clubs.  Fight club's major project, 'Project Mayhem', of which the first rule is that you do not ask questions, resulted in Tyler Durden and members of fight club blowing up a city.  What does this have to do with KillCap?  A lot of things, actually. 

First is the fact that Tyler Durden was crazy, like anyone who thinks they should live life like a video game, and who believes in taking down capitalism.

Fight club was started by a man who didn't want to participate in the 'capitalist machine' anymore, also like those who want to live their life as though they are in a video game--and those living at OWS.        

Tyler Durden burned down his apartment, the epitome of consumerism, and moved into a ramshackle house with dirty water.  A lot like an OWS encampment. 

After starting fight club, Tyler Durden and Tyler Durden (the imaginary one), went on 'missions' which served to spite the machine that made Tyler Durden burn his apartment down.  Like throwing molotov cocktails through Macy's?  Yep, OWS.

When fight club eventually grew, 'Project Mayhem' was born.  The idea of 'Project Mayhem' was to take the smaller missions which were organized by Tyler Durden and himself, and make them into carefully orchestrated attacks, carried out nationally by members of various fight clubs, to ultimately tear down capitalism.  Also like Occupy. 

The attacks of 'Project Mayhem' targeted everything that represented, well, anything (the movie was rather vague).  Some of the targets were BMW's and storefronts, again like Occupy Wall Street. 

'Project Mayhem' ultimately ended with a bang, so to speak, when Tyler Durden blew up the city's credit card company buildings, the ultimate symbol of consumerism, realized he was Tyler Durden, and then shot himself in the face to kill imaginary Tyler Durden.  This is also like KillCap's ultimate goal which is to take down the Capitalist machine.
    
     So really KillCap isn't that original.  Fight Club explored the idea and Occupy Wall Streeters are already playing it.  I thought Adbusters was supposed to be the cutting edge of culturejamming?  Maybe Occupy Wall Street is a sort of test run, like the testing process that a video game would go through before making it to store shelves?  Just to get the bugs out.  After all the data is collected from OWS, the makers of KillCap can then finalize its gameplay.  Like Communism itself, however, KillCap is flawed from the start.  It has already broken the number one and most important rule of fight club: never talk about fight club.  Maybe next time, commies.
            

When the Earth Gets Cold, BBC Gets Silent.

     WHILE SCIENTISTS WERE SENDING CONTROVERSIAL EMAILS, and the UN was meeting in Geneva and for climate summits, BBC News was pumping out stories about the sky which was apparently going to fall, and the earth which was on the verge of spontaneously combusting. 
     Now that Bosnia is experiencing the most snowfall ever and is under a state of emergency, at least three towns in Alaska are totally buried under record amounts of snow, 200 people in Europe are now dead due to record cold temperatures--BBC News is suspiciously silent.  In the 'Sci/Environment' section of their website, the former epicenter for the global warming propaganda, no such stories can be found about the extreme cold.  In their 'Europe' section, a story at the very bottom of the headlines casually reads, "Europe's Big Freeze Tightens Grip".  Hardly the Chicken Little-esque headline one might see as the title of a story about that warm day over the Summer.

So what the Heck?

     It's almost a sure bet that the first abnormally warm day of Spring will lead to more apocalyptic headlines over at the BBC.  With so much fuss made over global warming in the past few Summers, it would be an embarrassment for the left to admit that the Earth isn't really about to catch fire--literally at least.  Global warming--sorry, climate change--alarmists who actually speak when our planet is unusually cold, submit that it must be because of global warming.  Others, like the BBC choose to remain silent. 
     So it's really a win-win situation for those in favor of UN agendas and Toyota Priuses, but unbearable for those who aren't.  The people who don't like Priuses actually want the earth to catch on fire.  They are crazy right-wing Republicans who cling to God and guns, and want to throw grandma off a cliff.  Oh and they don't like kittens. 
     When the earth warms, it's global warming.  When it cools it's global warming, and the name is changed to climate change.  If you believe in global warming you like polar bears and you're smart.  If you don't, you obviously hate all living things and are an idiot. 
     The reality of the global warming issue-- wait, climate change-- is that it's just another tool of the left to justify regulation and to gain power.  Political correctness silences and ignores any argument contrary to the accepted belief of the left.  And what happens when the issue actually is questioned, or Europe is frozen solid?  Well, the BBC gets silent.
  

Media Monitoring Initiative! Great.

     YEP, IT'S JUST WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE.  The NOC's (National Operations Center) Media Monitoring Initiative is a rather scary, rather large leap in the powers that the federal government has with regards to censorship of the media.  It is possibly the first step in what could become leaps and bounds towards total censorship of our nation's media, and most likely will be done in the name of fairness and protection.  In addition, this new initiative being pursued by an off-shoot of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) seems to be in direct violation of our first amendment right to freedom of the press.
     Freedom of the press...total freedom...is essential to our society.  Free people must be able to freely express their opinions of leaders, of events and of their society.  The press must not be regulated by a government who could manipulate it to serve its own purposes, but be allowed to express the general thoughts of a population.  Free press does not mean, then, that the government has all-mighty power to monitor what is said, or who is saying it.  That path is a dangerous one, but unfortunately seems to be the one we're on.
     That is where this initiative, as I see it, is a direct violation of the constitution of the United States.  Unlike SOPA and PIPA, the Media Monitoring Initiative flew under the radar.  The initiative grants the power to the NOC and consequently DHS to gather personally identifiable information, or as they call it PII.  This information can be gathered by DHS from any publicly viewed source and from any individual who is keeping their audience situationally aware.  That could mean anyone from "Joe the plumber" to a suspected terrorist (refer to the NDAA for that definition).  The language in the initiative is so broad and so completely vague that there is virtually no limit to the use and purpose of this initiative.
    According to the Privacy Compliance Review of the NOC's initiative, the information will be used to provide situational awareness and a common operating picture.  What?  Something even more alarming is that this initiative was born out of one issued by DHS in the wake of the Haitian earthquake to provide assistance to the people of Haiti.  The DHS decided they needed more power, and in turn came up with this.  Essentially, information can be attained from any public source or any person who issues a public statement.  Under this initiative, the NOC could collect PII for this blog as it is publicly available over the internet.
     It's really unclear to me at least, what the real purpose of this initiative is, but it begs the question: what is stopping total censorship of our media?  The DHS essentially granted itself the power to gather this information, so what would stop it from granting itself the power to shut down websites or stop individuals from speaking?  The FCC has already proposed the Net Neutrality act which proposed "fairness" in the media.  What would stop DHS from doing something similar in the interest of safety or national security?  At the very least, the prospect of the Department of Homeland Security being able to monitor social-media sites, news broadcasters or blogs and then retain information is scary enough.  The idea of what they might do with such power is even more frightening. 

Here is the link to the Privacy Compliance Review of the Media Monitoring Initiative:

http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0002.pdf