djgreenarrow

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My work is in the same collection as Cuneiform from Ancient Mesopotamia, The Gettysburg Address, the typewriter that E.B. White wrote "Charlotte's Web" on, and the Emancipation Proclamation, in Cornell University's Rare And Manuscript Archives ...

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/06/cornell-madness-pt-ii-on-the-road-with-rich-medina-june-10-14/the-very-last-candle-left-standing-at-the-grave-of-gil-scott-heron

Check out my work in a new book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Center-Movement-Collecting-Memorabilia/dp/0989256030

preservinghiphop.org

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DJ Green Arrow is currently working on his first single with Original Last Poet Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, aka Lightin' Rod ("Hustler's Convention"). He also works in Fashion, and is cloning one of his custom Suits that Rakim told him he would "put behind a glass case in his studio".


Writer's note: My social media is rarely autobiographical and I never complain online or post anything about my love life or personal life. I created the fictional character, call him an Imaginary Friend if you'd like, to accompany me as my Liaison as I interact with the world. The writer is NOT DJGA. The author might or might not hold the opinions that Green Arrow does. What you will find here is the work of a man riffing on the species, crafting variations on a theme as he has here since 2008. The man beyond and behind the keyboard is surprised that he got this far and has this large of a committed following. Perhaps they should be committed for reading the words that come from a figment of Chris Defendorf's imagination.
With that poetic license hereby claimed, please know that, to sound schmaltzy, "there is a little Green Arrow in everybody". That means that I have created the character so that anyone could if they wanted to, find that good energy within them, and en use the basic attitudes, beliefs, and expectations that he puts forth as his own, but adapt them to their own life.
The writer bears no responsibility for your taking the advice of what will hopefully be your favorite imaginary friend.
The writer hopes to one day go to a Halloween party and find everyone in a DJGA costume. Playing the part. Having fun. talking Union, not indifferent to War, Treason, or Poverty.
Imagine his work read in great spirit by George Carlin and you're on to something.

IF YOU GOT DEFRIENDED It's because you weren't doing this... NOTHING PERSONAL, I just find it to be the highlight of my life knowing that Social Media was widely seen as something that stopped a War on Syria and for about 2 weeks me anomy comrades posted NOTHING except Pro-PEACE stuff...... and I'm only keeping people who value this ability ... I don't care about your Instagrammed breakfast as much as I do this. (DJGA)

How you can use your social media accounts to stop wars

Justin King | The Anti-Media

A student of history will say that television brought the Vietnam War into America’s living room. The nightly barrage of images of the dead and maimed was a major contributor to the anti-war movement. It was the first war that saw non-government correspondents in a war zone equipped with video cameras, and it was the first time the United States government saw major opposition to a war effort.

The measure by which social media is impacting propaganda efforts by the government is exponentially greater than television. At the moment, the internet is largely uncontrolled and unregulated. Images directly from the front lines are instantaneously available on your laptop, tablet, and phone. Those images of brutality and love, death and triumph, victory and defeat, are images that could have never been viewed a generation ago without actually being in harm’s way.


There is very little censorship on the internet. The images show the grim realities of armed combat in high-definition. Most Americans only had Hollywood’s sanitized picture of war. Few had seen what bullets do to flesh, how explosions literally rip meat from bone, or the aftermath of a real life version of the video-gamer’s sought after “headshot.” The images of man’s inhumanity to man are accompanied by videos of those engaging in the conflict and those unlucky enough to be caught in a war zone.

You can sit at your favorite café and watch a young Palestinian girl begging for her life with eyes as bright as the fire burning in the road and a heart as warm as the blood running down her cheek. Then, with a tap of the screen, watch an Iraqi insurgent stare at you with eyes as cold as the steel of his machete and the lead of his bullets, before he decapitates his screaming opposition. These are the realities of war. These are the realities of failed diplomacy. These are the realities of those in control wanting more.

Those of us in the alternative media like to tell ourselves that our work is important because we feel we offer a non-sanitized and adversarial view of the day’s events, free from corporate or government influence. The truth is a bit of a blow to our egos. You, the millions of Facebook and Twitter users (and even the seven people using Google+), are the real power. What you choose to share or retweet gives people that increasingly important viewpoint that alters the national narrative. You are quite literally choosing tomorrow’s headlines with the click of a button.


Just in the last year, US wars in Syria and Ukraine were stopped before they started. While it’s true that sharing a picture of a cancer-ridden child probably won’t save that child’s life, sharing information can stop wars. When you chose to use the power of your social media account to speak out and share the differing viewpoints about the proposed wars, you saved Syrian and Ukrainian lives.

When someone tells you that you post too many political posts, take that as a good sign. It means you are reaching out beyond those who already know what’s going on. You reached someone. You have planted the seed of dissent in another’s mind. Even if they had a negative reaction, you still forced a small grain of truth into their consciousness. The truth that sets men free is typically the truth they don’t want to hear because it challenges them to free themselves from their own scope of reality.

palestinian

As conflicts rage across the globe, think about what you share and the stances you take. Your opinions are reaching more people than you think. Realizing the impact of those silly little buttons on your screen carries a responsibility. Before you hit share, verify that the information or image is accurate or your power is as useless as watching CNN or Fox News; and before you retweet, consider the impact of what you are sharing with others. Does the post work to build the tomorrow you want, or does it feed the agendas of the power-hungry authorities that have brought so much conflict to the world?

Television brought the reality of war into America’s living room; social media brought the reality of war into America’s heart.

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Justin Kingand TheAntiMedia.org

http://theantimedia.org/how-you-can-use-your-social-media-accounts-to-stop-wars/

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NEXT ARTICLE:::
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.Why the Syrian uprising is the first social media war

This is how we see war in 2013: next to like buttons and view counters.

As a battle flared just west of Idlib, a contested city in northwest Syria, a camera was mounted on an old Kalashnikov rifle so the audience would have nearly the exact same perspective that a video game player has in blockbuster first-person shooters like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike.

The sound of gunfire mixes with an army of young men screaming “Allahu Akhbar!” Dozens of armed Syrian rebels sprint across an open field to storm a well-defended government checkpoint. An editor would later alternate between first-person action and a cameraman on a nearby hill filming the battle from a bird’s eye view.

When the rebels won, the video was guaranteed to be a viral hit.




If the Vietnam War was the first television war and the Gulf War was the first 24/7 cable news war, the civil war in Syria could be considered the first social media war. Across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Blogspot, Wordpress, forums and chat rooms, hundreds of factions in the dispute are waging propaganda offensives.



Social media has actually been an important activist’s tool in Syria since at least 2005. That’s when a Facebook group called Comic4Syria started producing anonymous and popular jabs at President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Before the outbreak of violence in March 2011, the comic had 11,000 likes. It’s since doubled.

While the Arab Spring proved again what a powerful and disruptive force social media can be, Syria’s civil war is the first full-blown conflict presented to the world by YouTube and LiveLeak, the video-streaming site known for hosting violent and graphic content that would typically be pulled off of YouTube.

Social media has “become crucial to shaping how the crisis in Syria is portrayed and perceived,” wrote Middle East affairs analyst Chris Zambelis in July 2012. In the last year, the trend has only intensified.

Both the government and rebel groups have dedicated staff managing social media accounts. They’re promoting their brands around the world, raising funds and influencing the international debate.

Even as entire cities in Syria face Internet shutdowns and after more than two million have fled the country, there seems to be no end to the constant stream of combat footage and propaganda from Syria.

Sitting in the top left of the video above is the prominent logo of the Al-Tawhid Brigade, the unit of Syrian rebels responsible for a YouTube channel with 3,000 subscribers, a recently suspended Facebook page with nearly 1,500 likes, and a slick website to deliver civil war videos to the world. Over 14,000 people have watched the Brigade storm that government checkpoint. It’s a highly effective piece of propaganda for the social media-conscious Brigade.

President Bashar al-Assad has used Instagram this year to present a congenial image of the man accused of using chemical weapons—with initial evidence circulating heavily on YouTube—of in the middle of heavily populated areas. Photos of his smiling wife and wounded soldiers are surrounded by angry comment threads accusing Assad of being blessed by God or cursed to hell. Over 40,000 people follow him there, and he’s gained 5,000 followers in each of the last two weeks.

While the loosely affiliated Syrian Electronic Army has taken out one major website after another to protect his name, Assad has similarly used social media to control his message. The official YouTube channel for the presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic posted a May 2013 interview that addressed the conflict and Russian arms deals—with comments disabled.




What’s interesting about the rebels is their use of social media to solicit donations. Hajaj al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti sheikh, uses his 347,000 Twitter followers to call for funds for the militias. Al-Ajmi’s donation drives have been so effective that the Washington Post wrote that he is a “money machine.” An Eastern Syrian rebel group even named itself the Hajjaj al-Ajmi Pilgrims in tribute to the man behind the powerful Twitter account, according to the Post, a feat confirmed in a YouTube video featuring masked men and assault rifles.




It’s difficult to pin down exactly how much money these social media campaigns successfully bring in. In 2012, the Popular Commission to Support the Syrian People, a Persian Gulf group of online organizers, was publicly thanked by various rebel factions for donations ranging from $10,000 to $600,000. It’s impossible to verify the numbers but “government experts and private analysts” told the Washington Post that these sorts of donations numbered well into the millions of dollars.




This new world of social media allows journalists to present an unflinching look at the war zone. In October 2012, PBS Frontline journalist Olly Lambert was working in the village of al-Bara when two government airstrikes hit 300 meters away from him. He documented the ensuing chaos including rescues, deaths, and the Syrian keen awareness of the camera he held. In the minutes following the airstrikes, Syrians wanted to make sure Lambert filmed exactly what they wanted.



As a Syrian man was being pulled out of the rubble and rushed to a hospital, several rebels kept the ambulance door open and demanded that Lambert film the injured man. Rebels screamed instructions to local women on camera to make sure that they eloquently insulted Assad.

“I'm sure they regarded me as a potential propaganda machine,” he later said. “People would often approach the camera and make speeches or cite ‘facts’ that were not verifiable.”

Over 100 journalists have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war. As such, news institutions are increasingly relying on social media for updates. CNN, for example, recently broke a story about Islamist rebels capturing the Christian town of Maaloula after YouTube videos of the attack were posted online.




In northwest Syria, an entire September 2012 rebel attack on the town of Harem played out on Facebook. The Local Coordination Committees posted a Google Maps image marking government troop positions around the town on the social network, reported the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The battle was liveblogged in the newsfeed, with posts that included a call for help from a pinned down rebel unit and, a day later, a detailed description of the unit’s escape from harm.




It’s further proof the world is watching war in a new way—and it “likes” what it sees.

Photo via AthadMjahdyAlsham/Facebook
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/syria-civil-social-media-war-youtube/