I just favorited this from @OccupyWallStNYC... (UPDATED)

"#TwitterBlackout. #J28"
January 27, 2012 at 09:37PM
from: @ OccupyWallStNYC's original tweet.

UPDATE: Well, that was a bust. I saw @OccupyWallStNYC tweeting on the 28th. Really useless.  Wondering just how purposeful this whole #Occupy movement will be in the end.  My guess is that it'll just draw attention to how little the powers-that-be like real dissent.  Too bad the USG can't just bribe them all to go home.  That would make things a lot more simple, cheaper and better for PR.

The #OccupyWallStreet Graffiti Man gets rebuffed by a local and a fellow #OWS person!

The #OccupyWallStreet Graffiti Man gets rebuffed by a local and a fellow #OWS person!, a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

It reads:

Dear Fellow Occupy Wall Streeter,

Please stop defacing & vandalizing the neighborhood. It makes the whole movement look bad. (And it makes you an asshole.)

To see what this letter is complaining about, check out my previous pics here:

thepete.com/2011/12/29/im-all-for-the-cause-but-if-you-wa...

and here:

thepete.com/2011/12/29/some-more-occupy-graffiti-from-las...

Some more #Occupy graffiti from last night at the 190th St A train station (this time it makes a good point)

Some more #Occupy graffiti from last night at the 190th St A train station (this time it makes a good point), a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

Not a bad point, huh?

I'm all for the cause, but if you want to #OccupyWallStreet you're a bit far north, Mr. Unimaginative Graffiti Person.

I'm all for the cause, but if you want to #OccupyWallStreet you're a bit far north, Mr. Unimaginative Graffiti Person., a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

Saw this just now on the way down to meet up with TheWife for an evening excursion in midtown. In case you're not familiar with NYC, 190th Street is near the top of Manhattan Island while Wall Street is almost at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, 1st Street is only about a fourth(ish) of the way up. So yeah, the #OWS spray-painter is a bit off.

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

kateoplis:

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. […] 

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s OWS movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.” […]

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the “real” economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Read on. 

I think I just found Alex Gigney’s next documentary. Less than 1% of the corporations control 40% of all of them? Awww yeah! Gun, you are smoking, sir!

Watch in amazement as a woman is arrested for drawing “GOOD MORNING, NYPD” on a sidewalk… in chalk.Originally found via oaksandroses:My friend Ryan’s amazing, creative, wonderful, kind little sister Rachel attended the Occupy Wall Street protests in NYC, choosing to use chalk as her method of communicating her unhappiness with the current state of affairs. She was arrested, as you can see in this video, and was never read her Miranda Rights despite being questioned. She was also ticketed for “damage to sidewalk”. All for using washable sidewalk chalk. This is getting pretty silly, guys.Anyone care to tell me how this doesn’t look a bit “police-state-esque?”She was drawing the sidewalk in chalk.All this protesting must be hitting ‘em pretty close to the mark to get ‘em all riled up like that, huh?