SOPA and PIPA: Power, The Internet and Me—Wiki's Down

What is one to think when Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and AOL, in effect, sponsor an international protest over Internet copyright legislation which includes the first inkling of what Internet censorship would be like in the West—with the voluntary, self induced, 24-hour closure of the Wikipedia website? What instantaneously came to my mind is, “I want to take a look at this legislation and see why it threatens these media giants so, for them to take on an active, public lobbyist role.” 

Then, upon going to the Wikipedia site, and finding what, to me, at the time, felt like a very insidious engineered, digital  redirection to my local legislators’ email contact forms, I thought, “That is power. From providing an encyclopedic knowledge database to becoming the first actively engaged corporate revolutionary, is quite the radical jump.

“And somehow, it makes a mockery of my personal, individual right and responsibility to be in touch with, and engaged with, my representatives in this democratic country’s government on the issues of most concern to me.

“It feels very weird to me,” I continued musing, “that the process which began what we are now calling ‘The Arab Spring’—where the previously powerless took power and responsibility into their own hands, kicked out the despot and changed their own reality to boot—is turned on its head, and the powerful attempt to persuade us that they are us (i.e.., powerless) and therefore we must give them even more power by declaring ourselves powerless and following their whims willy-nilly to who knows where? More powerlessness … ? I know what it feels like,” I thought. “It feels like Carnation is running a campaign to stop consuming Libby’s evaporated milk because Libby’s hires child-labor. Where as you and I care about child-labor, Carnation—in this completely ridiculous and dramatized example—bloody well doesn’t. They’re a company. They run on the profit motive. They want to put a competitor out of business.

“Now I’m stuck,” thinks I. “Who is the competitor to these Internet behemoths in this case? Looking at the language of the legislation, everything came clear, it’s the people writing for them. How can a poor little Internet conglomerate make any money if they have to pay royalties to their content providers?

“And that,” thought I, “puts us back in the hot seat. We—you and I and all our friends, neighbors, acquaintances, relatives and other members of our species are, still, now, more powerful than Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and AOL all put together. The Internet remains the greatest tool for democracy ever invented, because it  cannot be co-opted by the powerful. There’s always some hacker out there ready to bust open everything. Once it was Wikipedia itself. But, as the adage says, ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Wikipedia showed its true stripes. The only thing the powerful can do with the Internet is turn it off.

“Haha!” I giggled. “I’m going to go and look up the word ‘power’ in the pages of my Oxford English Dictionary. Then I think I’ll leaf through my thesaurus and see if I can come up with a suitable synonym for that word. After that I’ll look in the phone book and get some pizza delivered by telephoning a local store.

“I’ll show them all.

“Hahahahahahahahahah!”

With love and gratitude,

Paul

To Be Continued …

©2012, Paul Martin.  

All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.

The New Team Sport

The New Team Sport

Perhaps politics should no longer be played as if it were a team sport? As if it were university football teams facing off at the Homecoming game. The investment could move, then, from the beliefs which invoke “MY team,” “God’s on MY/OUR side,” and “victory—I win/you lose,” “my team’s better than yours,” and “crush the opponent”—or, simply, “the opponent experience” as a fundamental foundation of manifest reality—to something more productive for the whole.

When the primary assumption moves—diagonally, perhaps—to the common understanding that we create our own reality, what glories life lays before itself: A lovely, light-bathed boulevard of possibility, free from obstacles, going everywhere; everywhere, freely. Smoothly stretching into an extraordinarily fertile, enervating, ever-creatively expanding horizon whose definition remains, always, energetically vibrating with plasticity.

Revolving eternal dawn-sunset: The light in our lives would be so magical. So full of revelatory beauty, it would take our breath away, and jerk our attention inward. That internal examination would reveal such inner beauty that our opened eyes could project onto our communal highway a feeling of gratitude.

And that, then—gratitude—becomes our new team sport.

How many of us would not make the team cut in that game? For who do you know can find it impossible to say “thank you”?

©2011, Paul Martin. 
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.

Relief Is Here—The Quikening

Spring is taking.  It has a hold on things.  Her temperature hasn’t quite conquered the naysayers of continuing winter, but the sun’s up higher and higher; longer and longer.  The sky is so perfectly blue it stuns the senses.  And the trees are quickening.  Willows have yellow skirts.  Some of the certain spruces are peaking golden edges through the evergreen.  Reversing their shadows into gilding.  There are buds on the crabapples and the pussy willows made an appearance today in the grocer’s tubs down at the supermarket.

Almost exactly two weeks ago I wrote this poem.  I haven’t written a poem, seriously, for two years or more—since I wrapped up my book, Moonlit Baying.  Just haven’t had the sap.

Goose Beaks
Firmly pointed South
and calling to the formation.
Muskrats out on the ice
studiously study
the thawed stream
between the floes.
Cormorant glide.
The Heron are
expected back
in moments.

This year.  This month.  This March in Michigan.  This Now.  This quickening inside everything around us as we nestle against Park Lake, here, has me harkening to an inner calling.  So many things are budding inside.  So much is wanting to come to fruition, it has become such an internal spring for Carol and me that we feel we are, utterly, a part of the willows we see on the lake shore:  We wanna dance with our leaves showing; waving on supple green threads in a warm breeze.

Yesterday, as we sat on the picnic table outside one of the lean-tos on the beach, we watched a massive flotilla of Bufflehead ducks taking off and landing.  Practicing their flight after bedding down on the cold surface of the lake water for three or four days.  They rose as one and formed three-dimensional kaleidoscopic images with their grouping and curving, their in-flow and out-flow in the low sky.  Down, down to the surface to tease the water and then sweeping, so very grandly, up again toward the blue center of the universe.  Particle physics in the shape of black and white diving ducks to the liquidity of a Debussy sound track.

Buffleheads are diving ducks.  We thought them Cormorant, at first.  But we looked them up on the internet.  There was a picture of them:  Buffleheads.

We have, once more, become “birders”.

Nature’s sweet rising, as Spring rises to meet nature, has us in her thrall.  And we are content to rest there, in her embrace, a few moments, before we, too, sweep and swirl into the ether.

Such a hankering for creativity, we are fairly bubbling.

Thought you might like to know.

Hoping you feel the same way, too.

Spring.

Relief is here.

The Web-Driven Evolution Revolution

I just got this off Yahoo.  All you BBC listeners shut up.  We know who the best news delivery organization in the world is, as well.  However, watch out, BBC, here comes Al Jazeera.  Anyway, here’s the news flash I just read off Yahoo.  Blimey, the thought that I would get my news off the web is excruciating.  But I must admit it.  And revel in it.  I am really enjoying the way people are taking reality in their own hands.  Filling their hearts and minds and intention with the way they want to see it and then going out and making it real.

It is inspiring.

Here it is, this time, for real:  “CAIRO – State TV says President Hosni Mubarak will speak to the nation Thursday night from his palace in Cairo.  The announcement comes after Egypt's military proclaimed on national television that it stepped in to ‘safeguard the country’ and assured protesters that Mubarak will meet their demands. In Washington, the CIA chief said there was a "strong likelihood" Mubarak will step down Thursday.”

The army has chosen.  And so it will be.

Beyond that, though, it goes right back to two things which have brought Egypt to the point of building democracy’s foundation right before our eyes:  The right of people to gather in public without fear of governmental reprisals of any kind and with the protection of the authorities; and a military directed by civilians.

Ok, so it’s a bit shaky.  And the end result is not going to look, to us, like what we pride ourselves in, a “Western Democracy”.  But it is going to end up a participating democracy in the vision of Egyptians.  But, when you were a baby, did you jump up and strut your stuff like you were running up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum on your way to the annual fundraiser in your smart tuxedo and your patent leather shoes?

Bloody right you didn’t.  You didn’t wear shoes, for a start.  Your little feet, with their tiny toes curling, stomping down on their sides, your little bowed legs bandying about, your butt padded.

But, once you were up:  Watch out world!

Everything had to be child-proofed, right?

In Egypt it is time to child-proof things a bit.  I see the continuance of the incredibly positive attitude of everyone over there.  I see the women taking charge more strongly, for this is a “revolution” which is an “evolution” as well.  It comes at a time when women, en mass, around the globe are growing so fast they are able to go from crawling to running up those steps in one sweet move.  It can only be imagined what possibilities there are in store for their country, if Egyptian women—as I hear them wanting to do—take their energy, desire and will and create a new society for themselves and their men-folk.

The steps have to be coordinated carefully.  The inclusion of students, intellectuals, religious leaders, women and industrial and business leaders is imperative.  It is important for the Egyptians to watch very closely who emerges from Tahrir Square as “spokesperson”, because the downfall of the whole project could be inherent in whether that person is chosen because they have politicked themselves to the fore, or whether they were genuinely involved in the “movement” of the Egyptian people from the beginning, when they took the web and used it as a tool for creating and preserving freedom.

Finally, and this is where the women will be doubly important in encouraging everyone to have compassion and kindness and forgiveness in their hearts and minds, Egyptians have to engage in the “Nelson Mandela” process of Truth and Reconciliation which transformed South Africa.  And, judging from the way the World Cup went and the amount of people from around the world who went there and were welcomed with open hearts in a democratic and energetic country with free speech, the right to gather and a military in the hands of the civilians for it, the revolutionary evolution in that country was pretty successful and came out of very similar circumstances to the ones Egyptians find themselves in, today.

Most fundamentally important is that we stop messing about and that no-one interferes with the Egyptians’ learning to walk.

And, that we continue to use the web for what it is so perfectly suited to:  The evolving revolution.

©2010, Paul Martin. 
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.

Sitting on the Fence With a Sympathetic General

Maybe I just woke up.  I don’t know.  But one thing I feel obligated to do right now is play news analyst for a moment, in these momentous and tempestuous times as North Africa seems to be blowing up in everybody’s face.

I point our attention to Egypt.

From what appeared a solemn, intelligent and thought-out response to the desperation felt by the general populace regarding the possibility of the president running for election yet again, came a peaceful cry for some sort of democracy. A dignified cry for real elections for a change.  A very simple cry for change.

Now, it appears, the country has lost its temper.  Egyptians seem to have degenerated into a hissing, snapping snake.  Camels and horses, whips and chains, bricks, bits of concrete and clubs being flung on every side.  Blood.  A vile brew in Cairo’s Tahrir square, where world media has its attention directed, today.

Only yesterday we were hearing of fathers journeying from far flung, outlying provinces, to get into the square in support of their sons and daughters, saying, “Our generation could not say ‘No!’ to Mubarak, but that of our sons and my daughters has done it.  I am here in support of them and their efforts.”

Only yesterday we heard of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts flocking to the square in everything from full burqa to high heels and chic French sweater-sets, talking about change, singing about change, laughing, peacefully, joyfully and communally in a square where no harm could come to any, for it was the will of the people.  It was OUR will.  Collectively.  For freedom.  For humanity.

Only yesterday, the Egyptian army stood around the outskirts of the square, manned the checkpoints and, generally, provided that rock of steadiness the police lost from the very beginning.  A benign power, stretching in the sun.

Then, again, yesterday, the object of Egypt’s calamitous moments, The Mubarak, made his move.

And what an absolutely predictable move it was.  He got on television to say he wouldn’t run again, but—at the same time—he wouldn’t leave, either.  Total and utter BS from a man trying to protect his and his peoples’ interests.  And believing—as all despots do as they enter the twilights of their thrall—that with one simple phone call to the secret policeman and another to the general, “might” will rein in the errant populace as it has always done.

6,000 people descend on Cairo airport to escape with their ill-gotten booty.  And, meanwhile, The Mubarak and his henchmen are forced to ramp up the lowest division of young thugs, relatives of former supporters, and the odd mercenary lying around, to get their boots stuck into the folk in Tahrir Square and play for time.  Because, surprise, surprise, for some reason, the army is staying neutral.

Right there:  That’s the key to the discovery that it’s all over for the despot.  When the army does nothing as his name is defamed far and wide and—the worst of all possible scenarios for despots—people take to the streets voluntarily, spontaneously, without fear and without payment, the end is near.

If The Mubarak had been in his prime, this would have been TianAnMen Square, already, not Tahrir Square in transition, its cobbles being pulled up by hand.  The tanks would have simply driven over the demonstrators and within a year diplomatic relations would have been reestablished with every donating western nation, and everybody would be happily back to trying to bring peace to the middle east and talking about whether or not the existence of Israel is in or out of this or that constitution.

But, today, it’s a different story.  I think the army is biding its time, and. since there’s no sign of any other branch of the Egyptian armed forces, there must be tacit agreement and the army is taking the lead on this one.. 

The army is sitting on the fence, awaiting the critical mass for change to take over.  At this moment, the generals do not want to do anything.  And judging from the pictures of the square, I wouldn’t want to do anything if I was in the army and anywhere near any of the demonstrations, either.  Talk about outnumbered.

The generals are choosing their moment.

Pretty soon they will quiet everyone down if they absolutely have to.  Then they’ll either take over for themselves or back someone like ElBaradei as a new president.

Hopefully, whoever they back and however it happens, the end result will be a more open, more free, more communicative and more democratic system for the people of Egypt, so they can live without fear in a society which is supportive of their efforts to provide for themselves and their families.  Maybe the generals are sympathetic to that kind of thinking and have finally had enough of despotism.  That would be heavenly.

And, it would be one of the great essences of democracy:  Armed forces under civilian leadership.

The next move is really in the hands of the Egyptian Armed Forces.  Whichever way you look at it.

©2010, Paul Martin. 
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.

Of Reagan, American Enterprise and Walking Like An Egyptian

I got an email, today.  From someone whose name I cannot pronounce—spelled “Reince Priebus”—(and who is Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he says, no less).  I have no idea how he and I became correspondents.  Could it be because, in my errant youth, thinking I was going to work cheek-by-jowl with Norm Ornstein (a hero at the time, and, still an unbelievably lucid, well researched and informative commentator, news analyst and “resident scholar”), I interned at that bastion of reactionary politics, The American Enterprise Institute?  That’s relevant and germane to the discussion I am laboring to get off the ground, here, by the way.

The American Enterprise Institute was the holy of holies during the so-called “Reagan Revolution.”

Under this organization’s auspices and through its sister organizations, the “Star Wars” defense system and “Iran Contra” were cooked up, along with what became known, variously, as “Voodoo Economics”, “Supply-side Economics” and “Trickle Down Theory”, massive national debt, and what became the largest Federal Government in history, up to that point—despite the fact that this was the same institution which wrote the lip-service, lip-synced script on reducing government that every Republican lawmaker worth their salt was spouting then and is still spouting, today.  Although the Republican spout is turned rather more toward the Tea Party for inspiration at the moment, perhaps, I fear the AEI will be at the heart of things, in right-wing US politics, forever and ever, amen.

I was a lamb fed to the wolves over there.  For their member newsletter, they had me review a book one of their “fellows” had just written about the Red Cross and how their vetting and control system for collecting blood was flawed and would contribute, hugely, to the AIDS epidemic.  Here I was, a young liberal college journalist, wet behind the ears and dewey-eyed, thrown to the right and asked to attack that bastion of social order (in my mind at the time), The Red Cross.  Stabbed to the heart of my First Amendment beliefs and having to bear up under the strain of having them challenged at my own hand.  And I only got to hang with Norm twice.

So this Reince dude writes me that it’s time to pull up our socks and contribute a few necessaries to the impending Reagan Centennial Celebration, “Oh! Lawdy, Lawdy!  I must go!  Gawd Almighty Hisself is one hunnert years ole!!!!!!!”

I don’t know what Reagan did, really.  I do know that he was probably the first sitting president of the US to actually be completely out of his mind, literally, while in office.  I don’t know who, actually held the reins for him.  I do know that he’s credited with breaking down Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” and bringing Democracy to the world.  (Never mind, Greece.)  At least, according to the “left-leaning, East Coast, liberal elite media” (as the AEI was wont to call the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, CBS, ABC and any other media outlet they disagreed with).

This sort of thinking brought me around to a conversation I had with Keith Richards on a pent house roof in Manhattan around the time the Berlin Wall was pulled down by German hands on either side of it.

“Politicians say the wall came down because people want Democracy,” KR said.  “That’s bullshit.  It came down because the kids want rock and roll and jeans.  The music brought that wall down, man.  The music.”

And I look at images coming out of Tunisia, where the men and women in the street kicked out the despot Ben Ali, and see a beautiful handmade poster waving above a crowd of beatific faces, declaring, “Power To The People” in handwritten English script.

And I look at images coming out of Cairo, today, and see another wonderful sign, hand-painted, screaming “We Want Internet”.

And another, slightly more toned-down, saying “We Walk Like Egyptians”.

And I think to myself, “Politicians have nothing to do with anything but promoting the interests of the monied classes."

Today, as I look at this email from ‘what’s his name?’  I think, “The Internet is finally reaching its true potential to be the great equalizer in this world.

"But, yeah, Keith, it was the music which brought the wall down.”

©2010, Paul Martin. 
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.

The latest news about our food supply: It’s Been Sold Down The River. Result: Monsanto And Other Chemical Giants Will Own The Monopoly On All Major Food Crops.

Led by the traitorous, unethical and utterly irresponsible Whole Foods Market conglomerate (already responsible for the close-to-monopoly of organic food distribution in this country and one of the largest distributors of food containing genetically modified organisms in the world), a group of “leading” organic and alternative food outlets has capitulated to Monsanto’s scheme to genetically modify Alfalfa—adding it to their arsenal of already genetically modified crops such as corn, canola, cotton and soy which dominate the foods we eat or which the animals we eat, eat, in the USA.

If you have a strong enough stomach, surf over to:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22449.cfm and read what the director of the Organic Consumers Association has to say.  He is a little more rational; a little more journalistic about this subject than I.  But don’t leave here too quickly (I’ll give the link, again, at the bottom of this blog). ‘cause I have a little more to say.

Beginning with:  “For goodness sake watch what you are eating.”

From as little as a few months from now, onward, the way has been cleared, for Monsanto and the other chemical giants in the Genetically Modified Organism business to, literally, own the food available to you.  Period.

That food is, certainly, going to be genetically modified; patented; sterile so farmers have to repurchase every year rather than saving seeds; rife with untested and unnatural mutagenic and carcinogenic (purposely, conscientiously and consciously, genetically built-in) ingredients that will affect your intestinal tract; and will cause possible sterility and almost certain disease in yourself, your children, your parents, your friends, your neighbors and your enemies alike.

No one is going to be immune from this revolutionary marketing scheme, because no one can stop the wind from blowing seeds and pollen wherever it will.

So, in the name of “feeding the world”—which is how Monsanto has been marketing its genetically modified seeds—we will, in fact, be feeding Monsanto.  No Monsanto/No Food.

When Band Aid asked for your money to stop starvation in Ethiopia, it was pretty easy to disassociate ourselves from the actual suffering by popping a check in the mail or giving our credit card numbers to a telephone operator.  Try disassociating yourself from that same terrifying phenomenon here in America.

Starvation is caused, primarily, by greed.  Weather gets involved there.  And the way farmers have used or abused the ground they grow crops in.  But the truth is, the main cause of starvation is human greed.  How great a greed is it that drives Monsanto, that they can pride themselves on working toward a monopoly of the food supply?  And how great a disaster does that monopoly usher in?  And at what speed?

When you tinker with the fundamental, root genetic make-up of a food crop, altering it to the degree Monsanto already has with soy, canola, corn and cotton, for instance, things start to go awry.  Farmers develop sterility.  Their children suffer all sorts of cancers.  Consumers come down with every possible allergy.  Plant diversity begins to disappear.  Human intestinal tracts lose the ability to produce the flora needed to complete successful and healthy digestion, producing an incredible increase in such maladies as Krohn’s Disease and Diverticulitis.

Does this sound familiar?

I bet you have someone in your family with a digestive disorder.  You certainly have someone in your family who is overweight (another symptom brought on, in part, by genetically engineered food).

Do me a favor.  Do us all a favor.  Do yourself a favor:  Write the president.  Write Congress.  Write your newspaper.  Write your brother or your aunt or your best friend.  Call The White House.  Call Congress.  (you get the point).

And, finally, as I leave you and my inaugural blog at this site, ask Whole Foods Market this one question:  “How much Monsanto stock does the board and ownership of Whole Foods Market hold?”

And, finally, follow this link to find out how the organic food supply system has been subverted by corporate greed:  https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/organicdistributors.html.

Research for yourselves so I don’t get shut down now I started.  OK?  Just remember to look very closely at the links between (and out of) Whole Foods Market and UNFI.

Check it all out for yourselves and leave me a note at grotkin@gmail.com

Don’t forget, surf over to:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22449.cfm.

And please:  Think for yourself; research for yourself; and discuss everything with your friends and neighbors.

Love,

Paul

©2010, Paul Martin. 
All rights reserved. May be used with attribution, but not for profit, without permission.