TV is Dying, and Why That’s a Good Thing

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Though television viewership has been in the decline for the past few years, latest statistics compiled in a recent piece by Jim Edwards for Business Insider indicate the trend is accelerating. The article explains how a number of factors including changing technologies, consumer habits, poor business decisions, and an economic slump have contributed to television’s descent. Factors that seems to be skimmed over is lack of quality content and changing tastes, though it does mention that viewership of professional baseball and basketball have been dropping (could it be more people are tired of watching overpaid “bread and circuses” participants?).

I’ve never paid for cable not only because there’s plenty of better alternatives, but because I dislike corporate news and commercials. From what I’ve seen on cable while traveling, the only news without blatant U.S. government/corporate bias were independent news programs on public access, RT, Press TV and a few other foreign news outlets (and those don’t seem to be available in many areas). Though I realize I’m in the minority, I’d like to believe that at least a small subset of those cutting cable cords are doing so because of increased awareness of corporate media lies.

While dwindling viewership is distressing news for many corporate interests, it’s a promising development for independent news, alternative media and those in support of cognitive diversity. Even if many people abandoning cable are following cable programing online, there’s still a greater chance to be exposed to information from sources other than U.S. government/corporations on the internet and social media (regardless of government/corporate efforts to track what people view and say online).

Update 11/27: CNN and MSNBC lose almost half their viewers in one year!

Some of the major findings and statistical charts from Jim Edward’s TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It:

The TV business is having its worst year ever.

All the major TV providers lost a collective 113,000 subscribers in Q3 2013. That doesn’t sound like a huge deal — but it includes internet subscribers, too.

In all, about 5 million people ended their cable and broadband subs between the beginning of 2010 and the end of this year.

People are unplugging.

Time Warner Cable, for instance, lost 306,000 TV subscribers in Q3, and 24,000 broadband web subscribers, too.

And Tom Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, told Wall Street analysts he was “surprised” that 1.3 million of his 5.5 million customers don’t want TV — just broadband internet. “Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be,” he said.

Cable TV ratings are sinking.

Cable TV ratings are in an historic slump. Note that the “growth” line, as charted by Citi analysts Jason B. Bazinet and Joshua P. Carlson, is persistently below zero.

Fewer people are watching TV.

Even ratings for some major TV events are in decline.

People just don’t watch the World Series like they used to. Recently, viewer decline is led by young people, according to Business Insider’s Sports Page:

It’s the same with basketball.

Maybe people prefer the NBA to the MLB? Turns out that today’s big stars don’t grab TV eyeballs the way they used to either.

For the first time ever, the number of cable TV subscribers at major providers is about to dip below 40 million.

Cable and broadband companies are increasingly unable to retain customers.

This chart (below) is the most important chart in this set: It shows the number of net subscriber additions across all types of customers — cable TV, broadband internet and landline phone.

The cable and broadband subscriber business is seasonal. The net number of people leaving or adding services changes with the seasons, because people like to move house in the fall.

It used to be that up to 500,000 new subscriptions would be added across all companies in any given quarter. But now, cable and internet companies are lucky if they get any new subscribers at all. Increasingly, the industry loses subscribers rather than gaining them, according to this data from One Touch Intelligence:

For the first time ever, less than half of subscribers at the major broadband companies now subscribe to cable TV.

What’s happening is that people are giving up on cable TV as a standalone product, and the market is shifting in favor of telco companies like AT&T and Verizon who offer TV as a package with high-speed internet access, according to media equity analysts at ISI Group. (Direct Broadcast Satellite appears to be remaining steady, in part because its customers often live in more rural areas and have fewer alternatives.)

Here is how individual TV providers are affected.

It’s not an across-the-board collapse. But this is what you would expect to see during a technological sea-change: The weaker players are crumbling. The stronger players are picking up some of the pieces … but how long can they also resist the tide?

Fewer households actually have TV.

These charts, from Citi Research, show that the total “Nielsen TV Universe” — the number of people who watch TV — is declining. Note that the number of U.S. households is still growing, but growth in the number of households with cable TV is declining.

Fewer households have TV because they are watching video on mobile devices instead.

Here’s the big picture: People are spending more of their time on mobile, and less of their time on TV:

Mobile video is booming.

Even though iPhone and Android phones still struggle to show video seamlessly, the amount of video seen on mobile devices is going through the roof. About 40% of all YouTube traffic comes from mobile.

Tablets are stealing prime time, the period we used to devote to TV.

In the media industry, iPads and other tablets are sometimes called “vampire” media — they come out at night.

Ad revenue increases are masking the macro decline of TV.

The collapse of TV is having a counter-intuitive effect on TV ad sales: prices are going up, even though the number of commercials is going down.

The reason? It’s still really, really difficult to gather a large, mass audience in any kind of media, mobile or otherwise. The Super Bowl — on TV — is the only media property than can reach more than 100 million people in a three-hour stretch. That scarcity of large audiences makes TV’s dwindling-but-still-big audience increasingly valuable.

The TV business may actually be addicted to the very thing that is killing it.

Even though cable TV has had its worst year ever, cable TV revenues are still rising because companies are charging the dwindling number of customers more in subscription fees. According to analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson, those higher prices are “part of the problem” that pushes out poor subscribers — losing the TV business even more eyeballs:

“Of course, the fact that pay-TV revenue is still rising smartly is part of the problem … We have always argued that cord-cutting is an economic phenomenon, not a technological one. … Pay-TV revenue growth reflects rapid pay-TV pricing growth and that is precisely the problem. Rapidly rising prices are squeezing lower-income consumers out of the ecosystem.”

The market does not care that the TV audience is declining.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said in his last-ever conference call that the cable business has been ‘in denial.’

People who are unplugging from both cable TV and broadband internet are likely going to free wifi.

So if fewer people are watching cable TV and fewer people are paying for Internet service, does that mean that we just don’t care about watching our favorite shows anymore?

Not necessarily.

Free wifi — at work, in coffee shops, and on campuses — is making it easier for consumers to get the shows, movies and videos they want without subscribing to any kind of cable or broadband service

Fifty-seven cities in the U.S., including Los Angeles, offer free wifi. Facebook and Cisco have joined to offer free wifi access to customers in any business who check in to Facebook. Facebook’s original free wifi test included just 25 stores in the Bay Area. The company has now expanded it to 1,000.

For some people, there is just no need for a cable or pipe to deliver the internet or TV to their residence specifically, as long as they are within range of a free wifi hotspot.

Read the full article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11

In Defense of Cognitive Liberty

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Though the Drug War’s disproportionately harmful effects on the poor and people of color seem to have been one of its major functions from the start, it has also been a war against cognitive liberty for everyone. On the DoseNation podcast, chemist Casey William Hardison shares an inspiring personal account of how psychedelics transformed his life for the better, and how he successfully fought a system which imprisoned him for pursuing his passion:

If the state was truly concerned for the health and safety of drug users, they would do more to give accurate information to the public and make treatment of addictions accessible (including addictions to alcohol, cigarettes, and pharmaceutical drugs). Instead, the state seems particularly concerned about drugs which can potentially lead to an expansion of consciousness. But why is cognitive liberty such a threat? Terence McKenna shares his thoughts on the revolutionary potential of the psychedelic movement in this excerpt of a speech delivered at the Esalen Institute in 1989:

The provisional model (psychedelic/open-ended partnership) way of doing things is the only style that can perhaps seize the controls of this sinking submarine and get it back to the surface so that we can figure out what should be done. If we continue as we have, then we’re doomed. And the judgement of some higher power on that will be: “They didn’t even struggle. They went to the boxcars with their suitcases and they didn’t even struggle.” This is too nightmarish to contemplate. We’re talking about the fate of a whole planet.

Why are people so polite? Why are they so patient? Why are they so forgiving of gangsterism and betrayal? It’s very difficult to understand. I believe it’s because the dominator culture is increasingly more and more sophisticated in its perfection of subliminal mechanisms of control. And I don’t mean anything grandiose and paranoid. I just mean that through press releases and soundbites and the enforced idiocy of television, the drama of a dying world has been turned into a soap opera for most people. And they don’t understand that it’s their story and that they will eat it in the final act if somewhere between here and the final act they don’t stand up on their hind legs and howl.

So this whole effort to bring the psychedelic experience back into prominence is an effort to empower individuals and to get them to see that we are bled of our authenticity by vampirish institutions that will never of their own accord leave us alone. There must be a moment when the machinery and the working of the machinery become so odious that people are willing to strive forward and throw sand on the track and force a reevaluation of the situation. And it’s not done through organizing. It’s not done through vanguard parties or cadres of intellectual elites. It’s done through just walking away from all of that. Claiming your identity, claiming your vision, your being, your intuition, and then acting from that without regret. Cleanly, without regret.

While I think the value of organizing should not be underestimated, he speaks eloquently for cognitive empowerment and inner transformation as a path towards cultural and systemic change.

Listen to the full speech at the Psychedelic Salon podcast:

More info on why drug prohibition does nothing to curb drug use and addiction and actually increases societal harm:

Scientists Sign Declaration That Animals Have Conscious Awareness; Just Like Humans

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Via: Higher Perspectives

An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are — a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus. But will this make us stop treating these animals in totally inhumane ways?

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us

While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it’s the open acknowledgement that’s the big news here. The body of scientific evidence is increasingly showing that most animals are conscious in the same way that we are, and it’s no longer something we can ignore.

What’s also very interesting about the declaration is the group’s acknowledgement that consciousness can emerge in those animals that are very much unlike humans, including those that evolved along different evolutionary tracks, namely birds and some cephalopods.

“The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states,” they write, “Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.”

Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us

The group consists of cognitive scientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists — all of whom were attending the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and Non-Human Animals. The declaration was signed in the presence of Stephen Hawking, and included such signatories as Christof Koch, David Edelman, Edward Boyden, Philip Low, Irene Pepperberg, and many more.

The declaration made the following observations:

The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of non-human animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness.

The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and nonhuman animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).

Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in articular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.

In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that human and nonhuman animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.

Saturday Matinee: Battle Royale

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Reid Mukai

With the recent release of the Hunger Games sequel, it seems fitting to feature a cult classic that may have been the inspiration for that series: “Battle Royale”. Released in 2000, it was Kinji Fukasaku’s final film, a director previously best known for his “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” series of Yakuza films. Kinji died of cancer shortly after filming the first scene of the sequel, “Battle Royale 2: Requiem”, which was completed by his son Kenta in 2003. Battle Royale takes place in a dystopian society whose government regularly forces a class of high school students to participate in a deathmatch on a small island until just one survivor is left. Each student is given a bag containing food, water, a compass, a map of the island, and a randomly selected weapon. The students are also outfitted with surveillance collars that can track their movements and detonate if they wander into “danger zones” or refuse to cooperate.

Though the film is at times physically and emotionally brutal, it works effectively as a parable for the way youth are cynically manipulated by society and the different approaches people take dealing with tyranny. When Kinji Fukasaku first read the novel his film was based on, it resonated with him because of traumatic personal experiences. As he related in a Director’s statement for Battle Royale:

I immediately identified with the 9th graders in the novel, Battle Royale. I was fifteen when World War II came to an end. By then, my class had been drafted and was working in a munitions factory.

In July 1945, we were caught up in artillery fire. Up until then, the attacks had been air raids and you had a chance of escaping from those. But with artillery, there was no way out. It was impossible to run or hide from the shells that rained down. We survived by diving for cover under our friends.

After the attacks, my class had to dispose of the corpses. It was the first time in my life I’d seen so many dead bodies. As I lifted severed arms and legs, I had a fundamental awakening … everything we’d been taught in school about how Japan was fighting the war to win world peace, was a pack of lies. Adults could not be trusted.

The emotions I experienced then–an irrational hatred for the unseen forces that drove us into those circumstances, a poisonous hostility towards adults, and a gentle sentimentality for my friends–were a starting point for everything since. This is why, when I hear reports about recent outbreaks of teenage violence and crimes, I cannot easily judge or dismiss them.

This is the point of departure for all my films. Lots of people die in my films. They die terrible deaths. But I make them this way because I don’t believe anyone would ever love or trust the films I make, any other way.

BATTLE ROYALE, my 60th film, returns irrevocably to my own adolescence. I had a great deal of fun working with the 42 teenagers making this film, even though it recalled my own teenage battleground.

Watch the full film here.

50 Years After JFK

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Reid Mukai

In the half century since JFK’s assassination researchers have yet to determine conclusively who did it, but what can be proven definitively is that the official story is a lie. Despite overwhelming evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald could not possibly have killed JFK in the way claimed by the Warren Commission Report, many in the corporate media still cling to the belief that he was the “lone gunman”. Most who have examined the assassination in-depth suspect the involvement of a cabal of different factions, which JFK himself referenced in his famous address to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961.

Some of the people involved include those most opposed to the truth getting out. Documented evidence reveals the CIA was so threatened by independent researchers looking into JFK’s murder, they coined a new ad hominem attack to discredit them: “Conspiracy Theorists”. Worse than assassinating people’s character is actual assassination, which may have been behind the suspiciously large number witnesses holding important information for investigators who died in mysterious circumstances. Others involved in the “anti-conspiracy conspiracy” might include select heads of corporate news outlets who to this day continue to push the official story and discredit all information which contradicts it. Of course many people within groups involved in the cover-up had no direct role in the planning and execution of the assassination. Some might believe mass distrust of government would be too damaging were the truth to get out, others could be doing favors for powerful allies, were paid off, and/or pressured into cooperating.

As much as the establishment would like us to ridicule and dismiss those who believe anything other than the official story, more people than ever are open to alternative theories because so many have been proven to be true over time, there’s greater awareness that governments and corporations do lie, cheat, steal and kill, and the internet has empowered more people than ever to research on their own or at least cross-check information. Though it’s likely we will never see justice for JFK, because of the work of “conspiracy theorists” we are now more aware of the scope of government/corporate criminality and connections between government, wall street, war-profiteers, and the criminal underworld. Information uncovered related to the JFK assassination provides a glimpse into “deep politics” and an alternative historical narrative. Connections to JFK can be made to Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11 (which is not too surprising because they benefit the same military-industrial geopolitical factions). As new evidence continues to expand our understanding of what took place on 11/22/63, such knowledge could also help us understand government/corporate crimes of the present and future.

On the Smells Like Human Spirit podcast, host Guy Evans interviews author and activist Dr. Michael Parenti and whistleblower/ex-secret service agent Abraham Bolden on the events of 11/22/63:

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/smellslikepodcast/SLHS111.mp3 ]

James Corbett on why JFK still matters:

Bill Hick’s irreverent take on the official story:

A short film on the JFK assassination:

Justice System May Be Deaf & Dumb But Not Blind

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Compare and contrast the following recent police encounters. In the first, a man who was reportedly behaving in a hostile and erratic manner rams his SUV into a police car before they have a chance to pull him over. He leads a second police car on a chase before ramming into a third police vehicle. He backs up the SUV and rams it a second time before being blocked in by the car behind him. The man continues to fight the police as they attempt to get him out of the SUV and is eventually tasered and arrested.

In the second case, a woman in a minivan with five kids on board as passengers are pulled over for going 71 in a 55 mph zone. She argues with the police over the ticket and drives off but is pulled over again shortly after. A police officer tries to pull the kids out of the van before being rushed by the driver’s 14 year son who is tasered. The officer begins smashing the van’s windows with his baton as backup arrives. The woman attempts to flee again and an officer fires three shots at her van. She leads the police on a chase before surrendering in front of a hotel.

There’s a number of different factors behind the approaches taken by the police in the two cases, but one can’t help but wonder if race and class may have played a part in the way the respective drivers were treated. The first case took place in Oregon and the driver was Dave Dahl, a white man and founder of a local bread company. The police knew who he was because they received a call from someone believing he was off his medication and suffering from a mental breakdown. Whether Oregon police are better trained and/or afraid of getting sued, they demonstrated that police can effectively stop potentially dangerous reckless drivers without resorting to guns.

In the second case the driver was Oriana Ferrell, a black woman from Memphis on vacation with her kids. Though she didn’t deal with the situation in the wisest manner, she was not trying to ram the police and the police officers were also at fault for escalating the situation. Because she was stopped in an isolated area and was no doubt aware of the reality of institutional racism, she may have felt a need to flee for the safety of her family. Such fear appears to have been justified by documented police actions such as shooting at her van full of kids.

Dash-cam footage of the incident:

Poor training and systemic corruption may also have been a factor. Just ten days after Ferrell and her family’s near-death experience, a New Mexico police officer shot and killed a woman after a high speed pursuit.

You can more about the contrasting police encounters here:

http://www.katu.com/news/local/Daves-Killer-Bread-founder-in-custody-after-three-deputies-cars-rammed-232046381.html

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/police_shoot_at_minivan_full_of_kids_after_traffic_stop_gets_heated.html

Anonymous Calls for Worldwide Wave of Action #www

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Via: Anonymous

The modern paradigm may still seem insurmountable “because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin and destined to fall in at the first storm.”
— Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

The decentralized movement toward freedom is raging across the world. It cannot be stopped. The tipping point is near. Despite the lack of coverage in the mainstream media, actions are springing up on an increasing basis. A wave of transformation is rising. The zeitgeist is shifting in our direction.

At this point, given all the nonviolent direct actions that are currently being planned, it makes strategic sense for us to organize them, in a decentralized way, in a way that the mainstream media cannot ignore. A slightly more coordinated approach is all it will take.

The Awakening Wave

The last time we all rallied together in a loosely knit collective fashion, the Occupy movement was born and the 99% meme brought the corruption of our political and economic system, along with the grotesque inequality of wealth, into mass consciousness in a profound and lasting way. It was the opening act, the awakening wave.

Since the Occupy camps were crushed by brutal police state force, the movement has splintered in many different directions. This is now proving to have been a blessing in disguise. It gave us time to learn from our mistakes, figure out what worked best and forced us back into the autonomous actions that built the movement in the first place. We have now experimented with different tactics and thought through longer-term strategies.

Meanwhile, the repressive conditions that inspired Occupy in the first place have become even more oppressive. Now more than ever, governments no longer have the consent of the governed. A critical mass has lost faith and trust in our existing institutions. The present paradigm has outlived its usefulness. It has been overrun with corruption and rendered obsolete. Our political, economic and legal systems are doing much more to limit our potential than enhance it.

It’s Time For A Worldwide Wave of Transformation

Let’s pick a three-month span, perhaps throughout this coming spring, and unite our collective actions into an unprecedented Worldwide Wave that cannot be ignored by anyone.

Let’s crowdsource a relentless global wave of action that protests the corrupt, while also rallying around and celebrating effective alternatives and solutions to the vast problems we are confronted by. Imagine thousands of nonviolent guerrilla armies swarming corrupt targets and rallying for viable solutions for a sustained three-month cycle. If we begin preparing now, a massive spring offensive can lead to a summer of transformation.

Staying true to the vital nature of the movement, you lead, in your own way. Pick whatever issues concern you most and run with them, knowing that likeminded people throughout the world will also be fighting in solidarity, in whatever way they can, at the same time you are.

Not Focused Enough?

In an attempt to dismiss and undermine us, status quo propagandists will once again criticize us by saying that our message of systemic change is not focused enough or lacks coherent goals. This feeble attempt to keep people from joining in with us will be overcome by our widespread and consistent actions, which will lead by example and inspire the cultural shift in mass consciousness that we urgently need. Our diverse crowdsourced actions will boldly demonstrate our will to expose, fight and overcome tyrannical systems. By rallying around viable solutions and protesting what we are against, the goals and freedoms that we aspire to will organically become self-evident to all.

Throughout history, when people have fought against tyranny and oppression, they didn’t have one perfect utopian model outcome agreed upon beforehand. They just knew that the invading and old systems were detrimental to their wellbeing and had to go. We are now in that position.

Don’t let the propagandists fool you. We do not need corrupt corporations or aristocratic government rulers anymore. They are obsolete. People throughout this interconnected technological world have already come up with much more effective systems to replace the tyrannical one that is currently dominating our lives. There are already many effective solutions to our problems, solutions that are held back by the entrenched forces of shortsighted greed. Once a small percentage of us withdraw our participation from corrupt entities and opt out of tyranny, the old and obsolete systems of rule will quickly fall away.

Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that nonviolent movements toward freedom result in positive outcomes. Research has proven that it only takes approximately 3% of the population engaging in various forms of nonviolent action to create significant meaningful change, for the betterment of society. We now have the necessary critical mass of aware people who are ready, willing and capable.

Guerrilla Tactics

This time the police state will not be able to crush us. We will not have stationary targets. We will be everywhere, fluid and evasive. The movement will be an unstoppable crowdsourced, decentralized and autonomous revolutionary force.

We will engage in a diversity of nonviolent tactics, from large-scale mobilizations to small daily acts. Most of you already know the actions and tactics that are needed. Without revealing too much strategic information, here are a few basic actions to get a fire going in your mind:

-Mass gatherings, demonstrations;
-Marches, parades;
-Flash mobs, swarms;
-Shutdown harmful corporate and governmental operations;
-Worker Strikes;
-Hunger strikes;
-Sit-ins;
-Strategic defaults, debt strikes;
-Foreclosure prevention;
-Boycotting corrupt corporations;
-Monkeywrench corrupt corporations;
-Move your money out of the big banks and the stock market;
-Use alternative currencies and economic systems;
-Cancel your cable television and support independent media;
-Use independent online tools that don’t sell your info and protect your privacy;
-Online civil disobedience, Anonymous operations;
-Leak information on corruption;
-Use alternative energy;
-Build your own urban and hydroponic farms, or get your food from them;
-Support local businesses;
-Join local community organizations;
-Take part in food banks and help develop community support systems;
-Start or join intentional and autonomous communities;
-Experiment with new governing systems, Liquid Democracy;
-Create Temporary Autonomous Zones
-Host teach-ins;
-Organize socially conscious events;
-Make conscious media;
-Guerrilla theater;
-Guerrilla gardening;
-Guerrilla postering, messages on money;
-Help inspiring groups and organizations spread their message;
-Random acts of kindness and compassion;
-Mass meditations, prayer sessions and spiritual actions.

The list goes on and on. You know what you can do to play a part. Do whatever you feel inspired to do. Amplify what you are already doing. Think about what you are willing to do to be the change that we urgently need to see in the world, and then do it.

Don’t get bogged down in infighting and caught up in negativity. Ignore the saboteurs. Collaborate with people who inspire you. Keep moving forward with an indomitable will, a compassionate spirit and radiate a positive attitude. Moods are contagious. Be passionate and have fun!

Our ability to take part in civil disobedience is multiplied by our ability to easily record the actions on video and spread them throughout the Internet. By flooding social media with these inspiring videos, we will create a positive feedback loop that translates into more action on the ground.

Radical change is urgently needed, so let’s make transforming the world the cool thing to do. Let’s create a culture of transformation. Let’s blaze a contagious nonviolent wave of action through mass consciousness, signaling the end of the old world, ushering in a new paradigm.

Now is the time.

~~*~~

Ride the Worldwide Wave of Transformation
001101000010111000110100001011100011000100110100
#www

Tweak this meme! This is a draft call to action, a work in progress. Feel free to make changes to it and spread it around however you see fit.

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Two for Tuesday

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Congo Natty

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	Lara/Trace on Two for Tuesday

After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Author Archives: Reid Mukai