A modest proposal for OWS.
Give the CEO’s these kinds of stocks and bonds >:)
Cherry Lollipop: I know this has been going around, but I want to reiterate
The pepper spray used at UC Davis was 0.7 rating. The normal formulation for police is 0.2. 0.7 is military-grade stuff. There are only two formulations more powerful. One is used in training exercises for the Marines. The other? Primarily intended for use on bears. You normally use pepper…
(via luchagcaileag)
Open Source Freedom
I had one of those ideas that can only get better the more you share it, so I thought I’d throw this out there. I hereby give it free and clear to the world. Just please, if you implement it, keep it honest and transparent.
What is Open Source Freedom?
Open Source Freedom, or OSF, is an organisation and system by which citizens help other citizens help each other out of debt. Not for any kind of profit, but for the simple notion that debt is a form of legalised slavery.
The money you put in stays that amount of money. At any time it is not working, you can have that money back.
OSF is not a new system of handouts. It is citizens giving citizens a hand.
How Does Open Source Freedom Work?
People in debt sign up for a hand and state honestly how they got into debt and how they plan to repay the citizens who help them out. People who have a little money to spare pool it through OSF to help out a citizen in need.
When your money is given to OSF, you can check on its status by logging in and seeing how it’s doing. You can browse through the stories of people in need and check a tick box saying “I would like to help free this person”. You can check as many tick boxes as you like. There are no limits to the good you can do.
Once you sign up for help from OSF, you can log in to check the progress of help coming to you. You can see how much is pledged to help you out, and how many people are helping you. Once the pledges meet your debt, the money you need becomes yours to borrow!
Remember, it’s never yours to keep. You can pay off the debt you owe to the interest-charging corporation, and pay back OSF at your own speed. Just the amount you owe. No interest charged. Ever.
You can pay your debt back at a dollar a week if you want to, but remember, it is other people’s money. The sooner it’s back to OSF, the better for everyone!
We want to help everyone get out of debt, not just you.
What if I Can’t Afford to Give Open Source Freedom Money?
If you don’t have any money to spare, maybe you have time to spare. You can become an OSF volunteer! Based on your skill set, you can help represent OSF in numerous fields.
OSF needs people to run it. People to maintain the website, people to keep tabs on whose money is doing what. People to check up on people taking a long time to pay OSF back and see how they’re doing. People to make certain that nobody is doing anything unethical. Even people to create advertising or awareness art for OSF.
What if it Turns Out I Paid for a Bad Debt?
Not everyone is honest. There are some people who will try to take advantage of a system like OSF.
Since this is a system geared towards freedom, some serious decisions have to be made. You, and the other citizens who have lost your money to a bad debtor have a say! You can vote together on whether or not to declare the debtor as “lost”.
Once a debtor is “lost”, OSF takes out a loan in that debtor’s name, with the information they provided, and returns the money to the people who lost it. The “lost” debtor no longer receives any help from OSF, and is back on the treadmill with all the other debt slaves.
I know, it’s not nice. But neither is taking people’s money, given in good faith, and never giving it back.
Who is in Charge of My Money?
You are. If money is speech, then you should have a say about what gets done with it. All OSF does is bring it together to help people.
What Can I Do Once I’m Free?
It’s your choice. OSF would like to see you give a little towards helping another citizen get free, but if you want to walk away, we won’t make pests of ourselves.
The most you’d see from us is an email on the anniversary of your freedom, congratulating you and asking politely for you to share a little for someone else who is in the same trouble you once were.
What if There are No More Debts to Pay?
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? OSF would love to see that day arrive. However, there are still lots of good things to be done with your money.
OSF can take on Green Projects, to help free the entire planet from its dependency on petrochemicals! Fund local factories to produce products for the people and by the people! Subsidise organic farming or fund some research. Perhaps even create some Open Source Medical Care!
Wouldn’t it be nice?
BREAKING: Jeniffer Fox, the 3 Month Pregnant women who was pepper sprayed at Occupy Seattle has miscarried.
“I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’” At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach.
Well fuck everything
And the reason the pro-life folks aren’t screaming about the violent police fetus murderers is….?
My thoughts on the morning of the 18/11
I live in Australia, so the 17th is still happening in the US as I write this. There’s plans currently in motion that will come to a close before this article ever reaches anyone else’s eyes.
I can’t help feeling that I’m watching an empire collapse.
All the signs are there. Demagoguery, fascism, numerous attempts to silence the increasingly pissed off masses and trained ditto heads claiming, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that everything is fine and Big Brother loves you.
Take a moment to read a couple of books. 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Yes, they’re allegories against communism, but fascism isn’t just the bailiwick of communists. It’s an egalitarian evil. It whores itself out to any demagogue who wants it.
America, who once supported rallies of this ilk against a clear and definite evil, now attempts to silence them when they happen on its own soil.
I understand it. I do. It’s called “schadenfreude”. Avenue Q did a song about it.
Basically, it’s all right for the people to fight for their freedom, so long as they’re doing it away from here.
Yes! Any downtrodden citizen of the world can battle to raise themselves into true democracy, just… not in America’s back yard. We already have that stuff.
And when the people cry, “not any more”, America does the only thing it can to try and save face.
It becomes the very monster it has been morally opposing in the past, by smacking down the very people they’re supposed to support.
Naturally, this has the opposite effect and makes other nations notice America’s hypocrisy. How long will this go on before the UN peacekeeping forces have to invade America to bring justice, freedom and democracy back to a nation currently boiling itself in ignorance and hatred?
Will America be forced to invade America and re-establish its own highest ideals? Or will America eat itself and struggle back up to a world power by its bootstraps once more? That long journey will take decades.
And -hey- maybe it’s time America got a kick in its massive ego and realised that it’s been looking at a portrait of its glory days and not, in fact, a mirror.
Maybe America will wake up and realise that the corporate vampire latched onto its metaphorical jugular is not the sparkly and romantic path to glory, but instead - a vicious bloodsucker out for every last drop.
Either way, something needs to happen. It will not be easy. It will not be neat. It will not be peaceful. It will not be cheap. But all the same, it needs to happen.
The revolution is coming.
It always does when a few have ultimate power over many and too many luxuries in an environment of deprivation and debt.
Excuse me?
This guy had an interesting rant. What it boils down to is: Do what you like, just don’t ruin Christmas.
What.
The.
Fuck.
You have corporate assholes quietly and insidiously ruining your kids’ future, and that’s fine, just so long as no-one yells about it during a fucking Santa Claus parade?
We’re not allowed to speak because someone made your kid cry? What?
I’d image macro this with Professor Farnsworth saying “I don’t want to live on this planet any more”… but I have better things to do.
Like, making a better tomorrow for myself and my kids and everyone else on the planet.
/rant.
There is a way out…
Congress signed into being a constitutional amendment that allowed the President to take complete control - dictatorship, if you will - without the approval of congress.
I think it’s Rule 52 or something of the ilk. I remember seeing it in the OWS-tagged entries via Tumblr.
The President needs to use that rule. Take command. And then tell the armies to arrest every last 1% douchebag currently in the United States. Seize their property, their wealth and use it to build a better nation.
And enforce every law he needs to to make sure that corporations can not ever take control again.
It’ll probably be the last thing he ever does as president, because those who hold the real power don’t want to be on the receiving end of anything like that… which is probably why Obama is laying low and saying little.
Yet, sooner or later, it will come to that choice. Save a nation or kill it.
With the same tool.
Dear 1%
I know you like having it. Money. Power. Fame.
Everyone wants it. People usually want to earn it.
Most of you have inherited it. Or manipulated things so you can keep it.
There’s just one thing.
If you succeed in obtaining all the money - money then becomes worthless.
The majority, those “unwashed masses” you sneer and jeer at from your balconies as they struggle for a slice of justice beneath you… they’re going to realise that money is becoming worthless and switch to other methods of exchange.
Once the common throng no longer agrees that slips of linen with intricate printing on them are worth something… well… you’re in big trouble.
You’ll have no more power, for a start.
The only fame you possess will be as an object of ridicule.
And the money? Returned to fiction. Everyone else will be trading in -say- hours of work accomplished.
Your best interests are to share some of your wealth. That keeps the system going. Not sharing only hurts yourself in the long run.
Thankyou for your time.
CENSORSHIP OF THE INTERNET??!??!!!?!
Reblog it.
Didn’t something like this happen in Egypt, recently? Didn’t something like that fail worse than the Titanic? Don’t these people remember what happened to the last douchebag who tried this?