Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Who is the "guru" of Twitter? for me it's @BuzzEdition

Admittedly there is no such thing as a single guru of Twitter; there are lots of people with lots of different ways of doing things.

But if I were looking for a "guru", I'd bypass anyone who calls him or her self a "guru" or maven or expert, or anything like that.

Especially is this so in the world of "social media", where nobody really knows what they're doing, it's all moving so fast. Twitter always has been, and still is, about 12 steps behind its customers.

If I were looking for a "guru", I would look among the modest, the humble, the self-deprecating folks, who would never call themselves a guru, and who recognize the enormity of it all, and their own limitations as human beings, and who quietly go about doing their thing in their way.

There I would find the person I consider the true "guru" of Twitter.... Susan Elaine, @BuzzEdition.

(She will probably kill me for having written this, but what the heck. I like to live dangerously.)

Susan teaches by example that what Twitter is about is the same thing life is about: caring about other people.

We've all seen Twitter users who prattle on, and are all about themselves. Those people just don't get out of the Twitter experience what it truly has to offer.

I don't know much about Susan's personal life, but I know from being her friend on Twitter that she has a real powerful maternal instinct: she just cares about other people.

Twitter for me is about treasuring and cherishing and enjoying what is special in others, and sharing the treasures with your other friends.

On Twitter as in life, as you sow, so shall you reap; as you give, so shall you receive.

No one on Twitter better exemplifies that than Susan.

That is why she has so many friends here, who would do anything for her.

Thank you, Susan, for being my "guru".

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/5qgVg)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Bush probably would have lost 2004 election if we'd had Twitter then

We have recently been joined on Twitter by my wonderful friend Susan Truitt -- @Susan_Truitt -- from Ohio.

Susan was one of the great leaders of the resistance to the Ohio 2004 election fraud. I first met her in person on January 6, 2005, the day on which Congress met in joint session to debate the seating of the sham Ohio electors, a day which also represented the culmination of the historic Freedom Winter Bus Ride from Columbus, OH, to Washington, DC (See music video "Get Up on the Bus" by hip hop artist Wil B, who I believe coined the phrase "the political power of hip hop").

Susan's being here inspires me to imagine how Twitter would have changed things, had it been in existence on election day 2004.

During the 2004 presidential election hundreds of thousands of Ohioans, mostly black people, college students, and people who lived in poorer areas, were disenfranchised, by a panoply of vile tactics too numerous to itemize here. (My blog Ohio Election Fraud enumerates many of them, and provides links to books and dvd's for further study.)

The then Secretary of State of Ohio, Republican Kenneth Blackwell, whose sworn duty it was to uphold the integrity of the elections, was also the head of the Bush reelection efforts, and did everything he could to dishonor his oath of office in order to get Bush reelected.

In the months leading up to the election he engaged in numerous shenanigans, such as rejecting voter registrations not printed on a certain thickness of paper, illegally removing people from the voter rolls, refusing to respond to requests for polling place information from voters, refusing to confirm registrations, wholesale changing of polling place locations without lawful notice to the voters, and deliberate stockpiling of voting machines to ensure that poor areas, black areas, and college and university areas would be grossly underserved for processing of the inordinately complex ballot he and his cronies had cooked up that year. He had likewise "overlooked" things like distribution of leaflets giving incorrect polling place information, and gangs of Republican thugs planning to swoop down on the polling places in those same areas.

A large number of people, like attorney Susan Truitt, served on election day as poll watchers.

From the moment the polls opened, until long after they were supposed to have closed, innumerable horrors were visited upon the good people of Ohio.

Had these occurred in New York or Los Angeles there would have been rioting in the streets.

Because it happened in the sedate, understated, polite State of Ohio, such rioting did not occur.

And had the good people of New York or Los Angeles learned that the outcome of their presidential election had been determined by such fraud, there would have been rioting in the streets. That's where the "media" came in, to make sure that LA and New York and Detroit and Chicago and Philadelphia and places like that never found out.

The corporate media took it as their mission to ensure that word did NOT get out. And they deliberately falsely reported to the world that everything had gone smoothly in Ohio with a few "minor glitches" which the people of Ohio took "in good stride". As everyone who was in Ohio that day, or who read and watched local media in Ohio, knew, nothing could have been further from the truth.

The mainstream media "hatchetmen" reported fully on the election fraud which had happened in the Ukraine that year, but stealthily and concertedly maintained 'radio silence' about the even worse fraud that had occurred in the United States.

Although most people in Ohio were aware of the total sham the election had been there, the vast majority of people outside of Ohio have never had a clue.

If Susan, and others like her, had been armed with a smart phone and twitter, I submit.... the outcome would have been very different.

In Youngstown, Ohio, in Mahoning County, for example, the internet email joke of touch screen voting machines where a voter would press "Kerry" and wind up having voted "Bush", wound up coming true.

Starting at 6 AM, voters using touchscreen voting machines who attempted to vote for "Kerry" had their votes automatically switched to "Bush".

It was first reported at about 6:05 AM, and it continued to be reported throughout the day, until late at night. I.e. the machines that were doing this were never taken out of service or repaired, they were allowed to continue "fixing" the election all day long.

Had voters been equipped with flip videos or smart phones, they could have documented the touchscreen debauchery, as well as other violations.

Had poll watchers had a smart phone with twitter, and possibly flip videos or even ordinary digital cameras, they would have been able to take pictures and videotape interviews with the cheated voters, and could have immediately tweeted them. By 6:10 AM the entire world would have known what was happening in Ohio, and #Ohio would have been the trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.

It would have been politically impossible for Kerry to have conceded at 10 in the morning the day after the election, because the entire world would have known of the massive fraud.

I think citizen journalism has now arrived.

The days of the mainstream media suppressing the truth are ending.

And Twitter is one of the things we have to thank for that.

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/4PNE0)