SG political contributor David Seaman is in New York this week. When he asked if there was anyone we’d like him to chat to, the first name that came to mind, without hesitation, was Patrick Bruner from Occupy Wall Street. We were first introduced to him last November at NYC’s New School, when he participated in a panel discussion alongside Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, The Nation‘s national affairs correspondent William Greider, and Colorlines publisher Rinku Sen. The event, sponsored by The Nation and moderated by the magazine’s executive editor Richard Kim, was called Occupy Everywhere. It aimed to explore the new political paradigm brought about by Occupy, and the possibilities presented by the movement to redress the overbearing reach of corporate power.
Though the caliber of intellects assembled on the New School stage that evening was undeniably high, we were actually most impressed and inspired by what Bruner had to say. We are therefore thrilled that we got a chance to reconnect with him via Seaman and his video post above (which was produced with the help of Lindsey June Miller). We have a feeling we’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more from Bruner in the future, both as a skilled orator within this proudly leaderless movement, and as someone with great potential as a next generation politician.
During the course of their conversation, Seaman and Bruner discuss the misnomer that Occupy doesn’t have a message, how much of what those in the mainstream know about the movement is framed by just a handful of media conglomerates, and how the real issues are being buried by their propaganda. The pair also talk about the future of Occupy and some of the key agenda items the movement needs to bring to the fore – such as the fact that student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt, or that there are 24 foreclosed homes standing empty for every one homeless person in America.
David Seaman is an independent journalist. He has been a lively guest on CNN Headline News, FOX News, ABC News Digital, among others, and on his humble YouTube channel, DavidSeamanOnline. Some say he was recently censored by a certain large media corporation for posting a little too much truth… For more, find him on G+ and Twitter.
Millionaire Matchmaker, glam-goth reality TV star, mother, all round awesome person, and longtime friend of SG, Rachel Federoff recently became a spokesperson to raise awareness for the dangers of the choking game. It’s estimated that between 250 and 1,000 children die each year from the practice, however hard statistics are difficult to come by since many coroners record such deaths as suicide. This is one the reasons Federoff got involved and reached out to SG, since she’s currently championing a petition and letter writing campaign to persuade our government to devote resources to the issue so it can be properly investigated. Though numbers a hard to come by, the choking game seems to be especially prevalent in middle school aged children, with the median age of death from it being just thirteen. We checked in with Federoff to find out more.
Question: What inspired you to get involved in raising awareness for the dangers of the choking game?
Rachel Federoff: I met two ladies on Twitter who are uber fans of me, Barb Dibben and Neecy Jarman. Neecy lost her 13-year old son from this awful act and told me about it [see ABC News report]. Being a mom, I was, of course, devastated to hear about it, and knew exactly what he died from as I had a close childhood friend die from it in high school. I felt it was so important to help spread the word on this and, as of Monday, the ladies asked me to be the spokesperson for this. I was so honored and touched to help be a part of making the world aware and hopefully stop more children from dying.
Q: Can you tell us more about the organization you’ll be acting as spokesperson for?
RF: I will be working with Neecy and Barb and other non profit organizations such as the DB Foundation (Dangerous Behaviors). Both ladies received grant money from Pepsi Co. and we are looking at having the first national conference.
Q: It’s shocking that kids are playing this “game” at such a young age. Why do you think that is?
RF: It’s so crazy to me that people are so unaware of this as it’s been going on forever. I knew plenty of kids that did it growing up. I think kids are always looking at new ways to get “high.” If it’s not whip-its, it’s pot or whatever. Now it’s getting high by strangulation. They think it’s harmless but it’s not. They really do think it’s just a game, and when you’re young you have that “I’m going to live forever” mentality.
Q: And I guess kids being kids, there’s a lot of peer pressure involved…
RF: Absolutely, especially at middle school age like Neecy’s son. He was just thirteen. That’s why it’s so important that parents are aware of this behavior and have open relationships with their kids. Parents need to teach their kids that it’s not a game and will not make them “cool” if they participate. When I saw friends doing it I thought it was stupid and dangerous so I stayed away from playing.
Q: What resources are out there to give parents a better understanding of this issue? Are there any websites you could recommend?
RF: Sadly there just isn’t enough and that’s why people have no idea this exists and what it is. But there are some: GaspInfo.com and ChokingGame.net.
Q: What can people do to help?
RF: We are currently asking everyone we can to sign a petition and send letters to congress to make them open their eyes that the choking game needs to be addressed seriously. The more signatures and letters we send the better. All you have to do is go here. Also we’re asking people to post the link on their Twitters and Facebooks and anywhere else. We have over 1000 letters already! I also created a cause page people can join for more info and support.
Q: Finally, you know I have to ask; Millionaire Matchmaker is my guilty pleasure for many of us at SG. I’m totally addicted. What can we expect from the new season and when will it air?
RF: LOL Well it looks like we are scheduled to start filming Season 6 in March or April. As for when it airs, I have no idea yet. So many people are having Millionaire Matchmaker withdrawal. We’re coming back, so hang in there!
Wil Wheaton wrote of his unpleasant TSA experience right on this very blog back in April, 2011:
“I believe that the choice we are currently given by the American government when we need to fly is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and does nothing to enhance passenger safety.
I further believe that when I choose to fly, I should not be forced to choose between submitting myself to a virtually-nude scan (and exposing myself to uncertain health risks due to radiation exposure*), or enduring an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his hands in my pants, and makes any contact at all with my genitals.
When I left the security screening yesterday, I didn’t feel safe. I felt violated, humiliated, assaulted, and angry. I felt like I never wanted to fly again. I was so furious and upset, my hands shook for quite some time after the ordeal was over. I felt sick to my stomach for hours.”
Why write something original when Wheaton’s feelings mirror my own so precisely?
On a January 31st flight to New York for business (the videocast), I turned down the backscatter x-ray machine. I did so because, as I’ve written about before, the safety of these new machines is entirely up for debate: they’ve been banned in the European Union, and there’s some evidence the TSA and others have been lying (or simply don’t know) the true level of radiation exposure one experiences when going through the zapper, or “rape-scan” machine, as it’s affectionately known by frequent business travelers.
As per TSA regulations, I was subjected to an “alternative” — a full-body patdown, which fell somewhere on the scale from extremely thorough to molestation. Did a male stranger rub my groin? Yup.
Then the TSA agent swabbed my clothes and fed it into some Idiocracy machine; the machine started buzzing and coughed up a print-out. My clothes had, according to the agent, come back positive for explosive chemicals. Umm, okay. I challenged this, and he shrugged, saying they don’t know what I do in my spare time*. Zing!
At this point, I was escorted (along with my belongings) to a dark, small TSA “screening” room for a second patdown: more invasive than the first one, firmer rubbing on my privates, and not by a Victoria’s Secret angel or Suicide Girl, either.
Thoroughly humiliated and de-humanized, I was given the all-clear. The agent noticed my MacBook and helpfully noted that there was free wi-fi in the airport.
This needs to end. This is un-American. This is unconstitutional, on a variety of levels. This makes us look bad on the global stage. This doesn’t make us safer. This makes me angry. This makes me feel powerless. This makes me want to travel less (after my New York visit ends, I don’t plan to travel by air for the rest of the year — voting with your wallet is one way to vote).
And the only thing that makes me shake with anger and humiliation more than my private TSA screening room experience are the handful of Americans who believe TSA is a “necessary evil,” or even a GOOD thing. Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve been groped by TSA agents. But it was the last. I just can’t stomach flying until this agency is de-funded, dismantled, and scrapped. We can do better as a nation**.
I’ll leave you with this oft-quoted Ben Franklin insight: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
* [This happened to a friend whom I was traveling with, who was a singer with a well known band, and clearly not a terrorist. She had recently put on hand cream before going through enhanced “smart” security, and was flagged for further screening after the handle of her bag was swabbed and electronically sniffed. The TSA officer on hand, who was rather polite and helpful, apologetically explained that their chemical sniffer machines can’t tell the difference between glycerin (as used in common garden hand creams and soaps) and nitroglycerin (as used in common garden explosives), and thus she’d been picked out for additional screening because she was guilty of moisturizing. The moral of this story: moisturize (or wash for that matter) at your own risk before flying. – Ed!]
** Even the TSA’s founder, Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), has gone on record as saying “the whole thing is a complete fiasco” and should be scrapped (source).
***
David Seaman is an independent journalist. He has been a lively guest on CNN Headline News, FOX News, ABC News Digital, among others, and on his humble YouTube channel, DavidSeamanOnline. Some say he was recently censored by a certain large media corporation for posting a little too much truth… For more, find him on G+ and Twitter.
DavidSeamanOnline contributor Ashley Carey wasn’t thrilled with President Obama’s recent YouTube/Google+ hangout on January 30th. Neither was I!
It was an epic fail, in my opinion.
But hey, this isn’t Google’s fault. They gave the President an awesome global platform, and his administration chose to use it to peddle the same old cult of personality, instead of allowing him to engage citizens — thousands asked about NDAA and marijuana policy, yet these two 600 gazillion ton elephants in the room were carefully sidestepped.
Positively Orwellian, if you ask me.
That’s not what social media is supposed to be about.
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David Seaman is an independent journalist. He has been a lively guest on CNN Headline News, FOX News, ABC News Digital, among others, and on his humble YouTube channel, DavidSeamanOnline. Some say he was recently censored by a certain large media corporation for posting a little too much truth… For more, find him on G+ and Twitter.
SG political contributor David Seaman discusses the ongoing media bias against presidential candidate Ron Paul, and (possibly) preferential media coverage given to presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney. David also explores the possibility that the corporate media is engaged in topic censorship in a style similar to that seen with state-run Chinese media; Protest coverage (on all sides of the political spectrum), for example, has been woefully absent from mainstream news outlets over the past several months.
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David Seaman is an independent journalist. He has been a lively guest on CNN Headline News, FOX News, ABC News Digital, among others, and on his humble YouTube channel, DavidSeamanOnline. Some say he was recently censored by a certain large media corporation for posting a little too much truth… For more, find him on G+ and Twitter.
This past week would have been pure lulz online, had the denizens of the web not been fighting over something so humorless. But then there’s nothing funny about spying on your citizens, denying them free speech, and criminalizing vast swathes of them for good measure, but that’s what our government, and the corporations that are under the impression that they control it, are trying to do.
Following last week’s historic Internet Blackout Day, which saw the likes of Wikipedia, Reddit, and BoingBoing go dark, it was apparent to everyone that SOPA and PIPA needed to be put on ice – everyone that is, except the Democrats, who have been suckling at Hollywood’s teet for way to long, and appear to have got their mouths stuck there.
But with SOPA’s markup hearing and PIPA’s Senate vote both indefinitely postponed, the Feds apparently decided they didn’t need the ugly censorship sister acts to go after online targets already in their sights. It was therefore no coincidence that the day after Blackout Day, the US Department of Justice moved against file sharing site Megaupload.
Their choice of target to make an example of might have seemed strange, especially when considering that Pirate Bay is perhaps a more recognizable name to those outside of the downloading massive. However, the decision to make an exhibition of Megaupload was likely motivated by more then a little machismo (or more accurately the public loss of it) on behalf of the entertainment industry who had long been lobbying for such action, and who had been taunted, publicly humiliated, and deemed impotent by the file sharing giant. (Megaupload had posted a promotional clip on YouTube which featured numerous major label artists including P Diddy, Kanye West, and Chris Brown, and a feud involving disputed DMCA takedown missives, lawsuits, and online mudslinging had ensued.)
What was perhaps most disturbing about the US government’s action against Megaupload, was that they made the site disappear like a renditioned prisoner – without any due process. And following the arrests of the site’s founder Kim Dotcom and three other key executives in New Zealand, and two further arrests in Europe, it became very apparent that when it comes to copyright infringement the long arm of America’s law extends far beyond our nation’s borders.
Retribution, courtesy of Anonymous and #OpMegaupload, was swift, and within hours numerous websites were “tango down.” Online shop windows successfully owned included those for government agencies (justice.gov, usdoj.gov, and fbi.gov), entertainment trade/lobbying organizations (riaa.org, mpaa.org, and bmi.com), and media corporations (universalmusic.com, wmg.com, and cbs.com).
As YourAnonNews noted, the non-consensual blackout day was “the largest attack ever by Anonymous” with “5,635 people confirmed using LOIC to bring down sites!” Gawker subsequently gave some insight as to how the mass coordinated DDoS attack was achieved by way of links that launched LOICs unbeknownst to those that clicked on them – the lack of intention in theory meaning accidental DDoS’ers should have the law on their side. (In CBS’s case, a little hackery also seemed to be involved, since their site, unlike the others, at one point appeared to have been totally wiped, though we’re not sure what exactly they did to achieve this special treatment. Answers via Twitter please.)
But despite shots fired against government and corporate vessels by pro-pirate and freedom friendly ships, the battle to contain and control the web continues as other file sharing sites curtail their activities in the hopes of avoiding Megaupload’s fate. PIPA and SOPA may be dead in the water, but two even worse pieces of legislation are on the horizon.
The misleadingly named Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act would use kiddie porn as a premise to monitor EVERYONE’S online activity (and what politician can appear to be pro-pedophilia by voting against it?), while the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) contains similar Big Brother surveillance provisions and contains SOPA-like language that requires that signatory nations* monitor and censor the internet within their domain. So while we internuts may have won out against the tyranny of PIPA and SOPA, the fight to retain freedom on the world wide web has only just begun.
“They lied to Congress, they perjured themselves, they concealed the fact they had a major blowout from offshore drilling.”
– Greg Palast
In his latest book, Vultures’ Picnic, investigative reporter Greg Palast jumps ass deep into the one percent’s favorite combustible lubricant. Armed with a miniature recording device, condoms, mosquito repellant, K-Y Jelly, a 3.4-ounce flask of Felipe II, and his trademark fedora hat, Palast travels from Alaska to the Amazon, and from Louisiana to Liberia to expose the dirty business of crude oil, and those who make indecent fortunes from it.
During the course of his investigations, Palast uncovers the incestuous relationships between the petroleum corporations and the governments they control, and how human and environmental carnage, corruption, coup d’états, and cover-ups are ultimately considered a cost of doing business by these toxic bedfellows.
[Caution: You may feel violated after reading this interview — but at least you’ll know a few of the names of the motherfuckers that are screwing you.]
