Someone emailed me asking about my name. It was chosen for me as my father had read Ariel: The Life Of Shelley by Andre Maurois when he was living in England and was so taken with Shelley’s life, Shakespeare’s character, and the Hebrew meaning – Lion of God – that he decided to gift it to me.
Month: February 2020
StAriel
My father is currently traveling in Patagonia, Argentina and he sent me this photo that came across.
Social Media and Democracy Research Grant Announcement
The abstract for the investigation that I am project managing – The Social Media Behavior of Venezuelan State Media: A Case Study on TeleSUR English – is now available for review on the Social Science Research Center website.
Survey – 2 Chainz vs. Jesús Santrich: Who Does is Better?
Now Available for Purchase: Guerrilla Girls Like FARC Poetry
Guerrilla Girls 👍🏽 FARC Poetry is a collection of poems by one of the leaders of the FARC, Jesús Santrich.
The second narco-trafficker ever to become a member of Congress in Colombia – the other being Pablo Escobar – this is the first ever English-edition of his creative works ever published.
Reading this will give you insight into Santrich’s love for guerilla women, revolutionary men, deep appreciation nature, and how he views his relation to the struggle for a Utopian new world.
While both claim to be incolved in the cocaine trade, it goes without saying that given his infamy and that you can find his photos on INTERPOL Red Notices that Santrich keeps it way more real than 2 Chainz..
Go to Amazon.com now to buy and read one of the truly dopest poets out there!
World Social Forum Model of Activist and Cross-border Activation
I was playing around with Insight Maker‘s System Dynamics modelling tools and decided to make this model on the social movements connected to the World Social Forum.
The above is based on their 2005 and 2007 surveys, formating with an eye to netwar operations and digital/in-person protests swarms.
It’s far from a final rendition of the dynamics at play within the movement of movements – but does provide an example of political targeting that not only far pre-dates the Cambridge Analytica model but shows it to be inferior as it’s not relaying on simplistic-to-the-point-of-being-sophistry models of influence like those associated with the OCEAN personality tests.
World Social Forum as Unified, Organized Network Projecting Demands
From Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum by Thomas Ponniah and William F. Fisher
World Social Forum Defined by Opposition to Capitalism, Muslim Brotherhood Entryism
European Social Movements and Muslim Participation: Another World, but with Whom? by Timothy Pierce is an interesting work as it is once of the few works on the World Social Forum that covers the interactions between the Muslim Brotherhood, the various components of the Global Justice Movement, and the Green and Socialist Workers Party.
Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was actively involved in organizing the French ummaand as such was accused by French leftists of trying to import anti-Semitism into the “movement of movements”. His response, on page 63 adn 64, resulted in what became known as the “Ramadan Affair”:
“A month before the European Social Forum in Paris, Tariq Ramadan published an article (which had been refused by the editors of Le Monde and Libération) in which he accused certain intellectuals and public figures in France of developing positions that were based not on universal principles of equality and justice but rather on their Jewish origins…
The journalist Claude Askolovitch described the internal tensions within ATTAC relating to the figure of Tariq Ramadan and how Muslim groups had spent several months preparing for the ESF.
Muslim participation in the GJM was caricatured as opportunistic political ‘entryism’ rather than something they sincerely believed in.16 Until this point, most people involved with the alter- globalisation movement in France were unaware of the participation of Muslims. Suddenly the issue became national news and other articles concerning Ramadan’s text soon followed in the main daily newspapers. This happened to coincide with the news that two French schoolgirls (Lila and Alma Lévy) were being expelled from school for refusing to take off their headscarves, the event that ignited the 2003–2004 head- scarf affair which led to the ban on religious symbols in schools. Tariq Ramadan also became implicated in this controversy as newspapers reported that the girls had converted to Islam after listening to his recordings.”
World Social Forum as a Policy Influencing Body
The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is an internationally operating, progressive non-profit institution for civic education affiliated with Germany’s “Die Linke” (Left Party). Active since 1990, the foundation has been committed to the analysis of social processes and developments worldwide.
They were involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, promoting Black Lives Matters and they published the booklet The Battle for Another World: The Progressive Response to the New Right, from which the above quote on the World Social Forum emerged.