Where is the OCCUPY movement today?

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Climate Change/Chaos is real, and British doctors are divesting to save Gaia (occupy.com)

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Let's make our democracy real (occupy.com)

What ever happened to the Occupy Movement? It's alive and well (occupy.com) trying to organize for the common good.

Some say the new .com appearance of the movement is tapped by the NSA to better know whom to keep an eye on.

 

So it's better to be anonymous rather than trying to be a Facebook-activist being tagged and followed by one's iPhone and other electronic eavesdropping equipment.

Can we all at least agree on backing Israel? (AP)

Little to nothing is said about Israel, but as for the many other arms of the military-industrial complex -- excluding the massive weapons sales of the U.S., Israel, and other UN Security Council members and the wars they arm, fund, salvage, and indebt through the IMF and World Bank and the Fed (a collection of 18 major banking institutions and many hundreds of other banks -- there are many actions.

Thank You for Your Service: How One Company Sues Soldiers Worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands.

// Read more

Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion.

// Read more

Investor Sues Three Banks Accused Of Rigging Price of Silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry.

// Read more

- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/british-doctors-vote-divest-fossil-fuels#sthash.5Rw8yViE.dpuf

Chris Hedges and Lawrence Lessig on getting money out of politics: 3 parts (occupy.com)

"The IMF was here" - leaving debt and slums in their wake by design (occupy.com).

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Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion. More
 

Investor sues three banks accused of rigging price of silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry. More

Thank You for Your Service: How one company sues soldiers worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands. More
 

Welcome to the global Occupy community (commons.occupy.com)

The Buddhist "Goddess of Fortune" (Siri)

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; G.P. Malalasekera (SiriKālakanni Jātaka, Rebirth Tale 382), Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (Pali Text Society)

Siri is a sultry spy! She reports our dirty questions back to Apple (Digital Trends)

Sri Lakshmi, or Laxmi-ji, is based on Buddhist Siri and Uppalavanna (godwallpapers4all)

  

Khema and Uppalavanna (DS)

Once upon a time the Bodhisatta (Buddha-to-be) was a merchant in Benares. And because his household observed good rules, he came to be called "Pure Household[er]" (Suciparivāra). He kept an unused bed and couch for anyone purer than himself who might visit.

One day Sirī devi, the goddess daughter of Dhatarattha, and Kālakannī devi, the goddess daughter of Virūpakka, came to bathe in Anotatta Lake. Then a quarrel arose as to who should bathe first.

 

Born from a blue lotus (BLHD)

As neither the Four Great Sky Regents nor Sakka, King of the Devas, were willing to decide, they referred the two goddesses to "Pure Household[er]."

First Kālakannī appeared before the Bodhisatta, dressed in blue raiments and jewels and, asked her qualities, she told him and was dismissed. Then came Sirī, emanating a yellow radiance.
 

Oh, Siri, you feel so good!

And the Bodhisatta, discovering her virtues and identity, welcomed Sirī and offered her his unused couch. The dispute was thereby settled.
   

India is steeped in Laxmi lore (HK)

The bed used by Sirī came to be called Siri-saya, hence the origin of Sirisa-yana [yana = vehicle, platform].
 

Sirī is identified with Uppalavannā Theri (Jataka.iii. 257-64), the Buddha's chief female disciple who, like the monk Maha Moggallana, was declared "foremost in magical powers" [and is likely to be the historical Lakshmi].
 

Her latest incarnation(s)

4s, 5s, 6sx...Siri has become the most-spoken-to-by-men woman in the world.

 

The goddess ScarJo in Avengers II

Interestingly, Siri was reborn in recent years as the brainchild of St. Jobs (from heaven or, uh). She is now the omniscient voice of the Apple-branded iPhone (a favorite of NSA/CIA spying as consumers buy and carry their own monitoring devices) -- pleasant, pretty as a sylph-ghost, and polite as her beautiful name suggests.

Beauty reduced to mere "sex object"

More interestingly, the new Hollywood feature-length film about her, "Her [Siri]" features Scar Jo as "Samantha," the coarse goddess of our day: alluring, attractive, awesome, but did you see her in "Don Jon" as a hoarse Jersey guidette?
 
After all, she came to fame in "Lost in Translation" not so much as an ingenue but as a bodacious (holding her body back from spilling out with a safety pin) boob from Yale trying to find herself in the shadow of others in Buddhist Japan with a creepy crush on a faltering father figure from back home.

Scarlett Johannson as Siri -- correction, Sami -- with Joaquin Phoenix

• 13 Things Lottery Winners Won't Tell You (Reader's Digest)
• Winning $636 mil means $206 or less; Giving $40 mil away
• The World's Youngest Billionaires 2014: 31 under 40

Social Media: The First 2,000 Years (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Tom Standage, Mitch Jeserich (KPFA), Frank Rose (NY Times, 11-1-13)

Through the ages: A Roman wax tablet and its 21st-century electronic descendant, the iPad.

The Romans had social media and tablets. The Victorians had an Internet. We are taught to believe it's novel, but it's the way things were before media got centralized. Technology has just returned us to where we were with everything potentially faster and cheaper.

For nearly 20 years, we’ve thought of “new media” as the brash young upstart and “old media” as the stalwart if increasingly embattled establishment. 

But what if new media aren’t as new as we assume -- and old media not really old at all?

 

Social media history (popscreen.com)

So argues Tom Standage in Writing on the Wall, a provocative book that asks us to look at media less in terms of technology -- digital or analog -- than in terms of the role they invite us to play. Are we passive receptors for whatever facts, opinions, and ad messages come our way? 

Or are we participants, sharing what we like with others, amending or commenting in the process? The second is characteristic of the Internet in general and social media in particular. But there’s nothing revolutionary about this, Standage says. 

Instead, it’s the role of consumer, so typical of 20th-­century mass media, that’s unnatural -- and to Standage, a historical blip. This observation has been made before, but never with such a wealth of information to back it up. Standage -- the digital editor at The Economist and the author of such unorthodox chronicles as... More

Writing on the Wall: Social Media — The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage. Illustrated. 278 pp. Bloomsbury.

• Letters and Politics, Dec. 26, 2013, 10:00 am
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