Profile: People of Occupy Boston – John Murphy

BLAST Magazine: What do you do?

JM: Making sure the movement moves forward. Putting a foot to people’s asses when need be. Simple as that. I would rather be part of history than read about it.

http://tinyurl.com/cwd33re

Occupy Harvard’s walkout on introductory economics class still reverberating

The great irony and tragedy of “intro econ” is that it is at its introductory level that economic theory is both most broadly consumed and most malignantly simplistic. In a recent study, economists at the University of Washington found there to be an “indoctrination effect” for non-majors who take an economics course: on average, they behave more selfishly and hold less regard for others after taking such a course.

Generations of the world’s business people and public policy makers have been nursed on such courses. To gain some insight into why our economies and institutions are crumbling beneath us, then, imagine an engineer equipped with a rudimentary understanding of physics that omits gravity, and a certain above-average disregard for human life not his own. Now imagine him building all the major bridges in the world.

http://tinyurl.com/clbn4yw

Congress Set to Cut Heating Assistance Funds Just as Temperatures Plummet

How many people the United States government is willing to allow to freeze to death this winter remains to be seen, but it is a slap in the face to know that federal funds are apparently available to bail out banks, but not to heat the homes of the American people. It’s going to be a long, hard winter in many parts of the US, and some of us are not going to make it to the other side.

http://tinyurl.com/7mtkaa6

Boston PD’s bizarre Occupy subpoena to Twitter

A reader writes, “Boston PD subpoenas Twitter for info on users tweeting about Occupy Boston; they say it relates to a ‘criminal investigation’. Also notice their ignorance when asking for account info on tags such as ‘#occupyboston’. Smart cookies over there.”

Note that they’re also looking for IP addresses for Guido Fawkes, a well-known, right-leaning British blogger (real name Paul Staines) who — as far as I know — has nothing to do with Boston (let alone Occupy Boston). My guess is that they’ve somehow mistaken Guido Fawkes for some kind of superdistributor of Guy Fawkes masks or similar (the historical Guy Fawkes did adopt the name Guido while fighting in Spain in the the 16th cen), which is to say that they’re not just on a fishing expedition, they’re on a fishing expedition that’s grounded in profound ignorance.

And yup, they don’t know the difference between a hashtag and an account.

http://tinyurl.com/bn2u6wx

Suffolk District Attorney subpoenas Occupy Boston Twitter info

The subpoena requests “available subscriber information, for the account or accounts associated with the following information, including IP address logs for account creation” but, inexplicably, includes not only account names, but also hashtags and a term which is neither account name nor hashtag. The “accounts” which Goldberger has subpoenaed about are Guido Fawkes, @po0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak3. “Guido Fawkes” appears to be a reference to Guy Fawkes, the stylized mask of whom has come to be associated with the hacker group “Anonymous.” That same group might be referenced in the “@po0isAn0N” user name. “#d0xcak3” seems to be a reference to “doxing” i.e. releasing personal information about people over the Internet.

http://tinyurl.com/86drpts

2011 Year in Review: Top 5 Topics in U.S. Politics

1. Occupy Wall Street

But something happened that people didn’t expect: Occupy Wall Street caught on. The protesters did not leave. They set up camp in Zuccotti Park and stayed there for two months before the New York Police Department evicted them in mid-November — and after that, they regrouped and continued to organize marches and other actions throughout the city.

More importantly, Occupy Wall Street inspired similar actions in dozens of cities across the country and around the world, many of which are ongoing. In Washington, politicians from both parties have been forced to take sides on the issue of economic inequality, bringing the protesters’ talking points into the national spotlight in a way they had not been before. Many people blasted Occupy Wall Street’s positions, but nobody could ignore them. Even the people cursing them out were talking about them — and that was the point. It’s too soon to guage Occupy Wall Street’s impact on U.S. public policy — the movement has not experienced even one congressional election yet — but it is safe to say that the Occupy coalition has changed the political culture in the United States — it has “restructured the debate” to the point that income inequality is now on the mind of senators and representatives.

http://tinyurl.com/7gwb24w