South Americans Empowered by Technology

Can't get enough of those South American power to the people via technology news stories. An email blast from NYC's Mean Red hipped me to this one. It's the continuation to where John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man left off, with strategies to use global techniques to fight back against corporate global domination. In Ecuador the Shuar tribe is getting loked to fight off the oil companies sequestering of tribal lands and demolition of the rain forest. A nonprofit out of Virgina has equipped the tribes-people with GPS devices to successfully map the forest. The devices aid them in "territorial vigilance" - they chart and deleniate boundaries to assert their interests. In other words they have lawyers and the shit is written out and documented so they can prove they own the land when the bulldozers show up illegally.

Next I read about Facebook bringing about global protest against guerrilla terrorist group The Farc in Colombia:

The protesters waved flags and wore T-shirts with the slogan: "No more kidnapping, no more lies, no more deaths, no more Farc." Some estimates put the number of people protesting in Bogota at between 500,000 and two million. The protest was started less than a month ago on the social networking website Facebook by a 33-year-old engineer, Oscar Morales, from his home in Barranquilla on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Over 250,000 Facebook users signed on, and the movement was taken up by newspapers and radio and television stations across the country...BBC News

When government fails, Google Earth and social media prevail. I'm hoping Bay Area techies work on Superfriends powers next - like Wonder Twin rings available at Radioshack.

Fun Tonight

Zizek happens Wednesdays and has been on hiatus for the past month and a half and tonight it is a brand new party.

Zizek was named after a well-known Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, who married an Argentine lingerie model. The party includes live cumbia and South American rap acts along with resident deejays and global guests like Diplo. Villa Diamante is a resident, Zurita makes appearances, as does El Remolon, Daleduro, Oro11, and Marcelo Fabian. These are the members of Buenos Aires’ rat pack of hip hop/ cumbia/ reggaeton. Whatever you call it, they bring the street to the club. In March, they’re taking their sound of urban Buenos Aires mobile; not to Punta Del Este or even to Rio, the chicos are bringing Zizek to South By Southwest......more

Better Looking V. More Fit For the Job

Hillary, please.
If America was so ready for real change, as Obama says, it would have done something to stop all the criminal activity of the past eight years while we were as one nation, under oil.

Of course I like him myself and would like to see change. But I don't think he can bring about change with inspiring speeches. I don't see him as ready to fight the bad guys properly and they're not going away anytime soon. Thinking their time is done is incredibly naive. There will be more Cheneys and they will kill more people, steal from entire nations and generations, and the American on his couch enjoying Obama's speeches will continue to do nothing to stop the empire.

In 2008, most Americans are too busy working to approach critical analysis of the propaganda thrown at them by advertisers and media. Many haven't been provided the opportunity for an education that teaches you to read between the lines. Real change takes time and effort and America isn't in a position to do that hard work right now. The country has been debilitated by eight years of fear, manipulation, and of the pillaging of the economy. What America needs is a competent leader like Hillary who will clean up the mess that is our foreign policy, economy, and education and health care systems. Despite his popularity, JFK didn't do much as president. He was great at being Hollywood. Obama isn't prepared to do battle with the repubs and push through key policy. He's approached the race without an economic proposal and is banking on his public image to put him in the seat of world leader, rather than real know-how.

Hillary is fit to fight the anti-democratic forces in Washington, like those in this past administration, and win. To fight the machine of politicians engaged in a policy of self interest, you must be in the machine with your own mechanized army. If Obama wins and if he is then elected to the presidency, he may easily become a do-nothing president, and possibly through little fault of his own, but rather through not being prepared to work the machine. The country can't afford that at this point in our history. I hope he gets his chance to work for change. In about eight years from now.