Thursday, September 29, 2011

Who Watches the Watchmen? WE DO.

More crowdsourcing illustrating the validity of the self-organizing network theory of the body politic emerges from the Occupy Wall Street movement:

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The Pepper Spray Videos - Bologna porked

All 4 of the videos of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying penned female protesters are in wide circulation now, including this the key one:


... which is a 1st-person view from inside the kettle. Some events are much clearer here, as was my observation (argued with by many) that the black White-Shirt is grabbing that black-haired woman by her hair (and not her backpack as some attempted to argue) and that she is shaking the barricade in shock and distress at witnessing the brutal assault in front of her (not attempting to "tear it down or otherwise obstruct [it's] placement")



This is a superb right-left syncronization of videos #1 and #3 supporting my claims that the videos could be matched up in timing and sequence to refute police spokesperson Paul J. Browne's claim that "the video was edited" and pepper spray used "appropriately."


It certainly was enough evidence for USLaw.com to publish this:


... in which USLaw takes views the videos, making the same observations and coming to the same conclusions.

It also seems to have been enough for the New York Times to call for an investigation of Bologna (which I was calling out to the NYT for on Monday/26th in my video analysis post). Good thing too, because another video has surfaced (5 public so far) of the same event:


This video is taken right after Bologna sprays the penned women; you can both see and hear them in the background, matching actions in the same way; all the videos that have surfaced have been used to build a multiple-perspective, virtual reconstruction of the event.

So it's pretty clear from this quilted, multiplexed reconstruction that Bologna was walking around pepper-spraying protesters in direct contravention of both NY civil law and accepted police procedures.


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You are the eyes of the world

Another crowdsourcing effort is underway to identify this officer (Red Coat) as being observed in many of the videos of Occupy Wall Street allegedly encouraging, directing and singling out individuals for brutal tactical examples as well as digging his hands in for some action.



UPDATE: and the sheer speed of the net: as I'm writing this post, this information is posted: Red Jacket has been identified as Officer Kenneth O'Donnell Badge # 7432 and the details of the accusations against him are off that link. Only a few hours from call to conclusion... done by people, by hand. That should make you gasp in wonder. This is a non-professional, non-hierarchical method of using the technological power of a motivated crowd for a purpose - electronic democracy in action.



As videos and photographs continue to multiply and afford the same multiplexing capability for reconstructing events, the sheer power of unbridled communication is being revealed - the same power that has been up til now in a small set of hands because of cost-of-entry and political barriers. You're also seeing the virtual reconstruction of a live event through multiplicity of sources and co-operative publishing.

The net is egalitarian. The same technology that has been being used against citizens is now being turned around to observe the mechanisms of power... and the people who grew up with this stuff know how to use it much better. The Information Revolution in action.

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Framing the debate {power plays}


This tweet strikes to the heart of the debate being pushed for Occupy Wall Street to "present a list of demands" and is very observant:

People are trying to rush #OccupyWallStreet into making "Demands" so they can rush to demagogue them & divide the protest.

We have watched the peer-to-peer networking in action with the crowdsourcing of Bologna and O'Donnell, we are observing an attempt to use the network model as democratic process
the way it has been used in popular net culture. From the first day, people have been offering suggestions both wild and reasonable through live participation, blogs and Twitter as a codification of their perceptions that many things are wrong in this state of things, and that many more are connected to a very few levers. These points and suggestions are being taken up by the General Assembly.

The situation reminds me greatly of the meetings, public forums and debates that led to the First Continental Congress. They didn't rush either.



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Media

Still not enough real Lamestream Media to make a big thing about it (although they are catching on, smelling blood and fueled by citizen-journalists' efforts in breaking this story) so infolinks are mixed in, as many links from the past 11 days are being retweeted [proliferation of signal, the important ones reverberating as the crowd makes it's choices on-the-fly as to what is expressive of their intent and feelings and worth retransmission; chaotic math].

For more media links, see my past posts in this series.

[tweets in italic]

NYPD Caught On Camera Punching
#OccupyWallStreet Protestor In The Face

more nice White Shirt brutality, this one showing a definitely-not-standard-practices haymaker punch. [youtube]

Over 700 pilots march for Occupy Wall Street
Awesome.

Interview with Chelsea Elliot [NYT]

Observations of a Jailed Journalist
is a first-person account of MetroFocus reporter John Farley, documenting the pepper-spraying incident.

What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests? [salon]
Glen Greenwald analyzes.

This pic is worth 1,000,000 bytes

Michael Moore: 'Something Has Started'
But you don't know what it is; do you Mother Jones...

ABC News Suggests Eating Out of a Dumpster
as Viable Alternative to "Spending"

This one has people chuckling hysterically in absolute scorn.

UK Channel 4 News tentatively floats a story
late to the party :D


#occupywallstreet has 3107 tweets/hr but is still not trending. Harold and Kumar is trending with only 323 tweets/hr. [more public use of analysis tools used by the marketeers]

THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM. KEEP BROADCASTING. THANK YOU.

Rosa Parks occupied a bus seat & peacefully refused 2 remain invisible. Expect us.

re: Glass Steagall: I agree, good concrete goal eventually. But for now, #occupywallstreet is a purely cathartic.

[many tweets repeating #hashtags in other cities starting Occupy momevents/demonstrations]


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2 comments:

  1. good girl, give it to them. And thank god for cellphone video cameras!! They can be really bad in some situations but are necessary to prevent injustice in other cases...

    ReplyDelete