“They say that history is written by the winners. That means that history is a self-serving version of the past written by the people who created it, trying to rationalize the mistakes that they made. Well, and of course, it also means celebrating the better decisions made by those politicians and rulers. That premise is no longer true, however. History is now made by all of us.
Today, if Columbus strode onto the shores of that island in the Bahamas, he would be greeted by a barrage of flashing cell phone cameras held by the native Arawak Indians. Instantly posted to the internet, the blogs would begin warning that he had taken some prisoners who were wearing gold ornaments in their ears. It is unlikely that he would have repeated that behavior in Cuba and Hispaniola (today’s Haiti and the Dominican Republic), his next stops.”Wha’ The … a bit of MaDiSon wi history, a dissident/activist’s experiences
In order to defeat a force of nature like Ann, she had given them the blueprints.
Blog culture would be destroyed in favor of the Ministry of Truth, where anonymous censors could make others not see your posts, unperson you, or click a button and disappear you, your readers, your social connections; or ten years of your work, your story, your contribution to that history.
Ann went on to say great things about Ted Turner and the monster he created:
“By the time he had reached Cuba, CNN would be set up on the shore. (Ted Turner is right to be proud of his creation of 24 hour news.) CNN and MSNBC allow the cell phones flashing all over the world to communicate the mistakes that are being made via television to those without their own laptops and cellphones.”
I wonder if Ann were alive today, whether she would still sing their praises and insist they would come to our rescue.
Or whether she would be wise to the fact that CNN and MSNBC had been captured by those who seek to win and re-write history and erase their mistakes.
Celebrating the poor planning and decision making of those people.
Lying and lying and lying and lying and lying and lying and lying 24 * 7 * 365.
It’s funny to me that Ann would use Cuba as an example. CNN is definitely on team Cuba. CNN would be able to respond to that situation so quickly due to the fact that they doubtlessly have a satellite office, if not corporate HQ, in Cuba.
Would Ann ever see the day coming where the internet she celebrated would erase anyone who remembers — whether digitally erasing and unpersoning them, or literally, in a hole in the ground they were ordered to dig for themselves?
Did she know that CNN would be an enforcement arm of the American Gestapo, with the FBI warning you that if you didn’t cooperate with them “CNN would be on your front lawn” with those very cameras Ann said CNN would wield as a weapon of truth and defense of the common man and the innocents from tyrants?
I knew that in 2002 when they did that to everyone who even had so much as social contact with Joseph Konopka, aka “Doc Chaos.”
They did the same thing to the company that employed me and Konopka, “guild.com” aka “the artful home.” They said they would have “CNN in their lobby” to tell the world they had “hired a terrorist.”
I was immediately fired for failing to “fulfill my legal and moral obligation to report him to the FBI” as though I had any clue about the circumstances under which he was arrested. They altered his 1099 to use my social security number, frame me for the taxes, and erase any record of employing him.
The company had already been giving me the Michael Jackson treatment long before that. Katie Kazan, managing editor, looked up “my name” on CCAP and found one Robert M Starks, born a year after me, with a long list of drug offenses, domestic issues, misdemeanors — and went around the company smearing me for my “prison record” and “lying on my application.” For which I ultimately got a public apology in front of the entire company and a $40,000 EEOC settlement.
— we’ll redact this part , if you think it’s funny, feel free to share it elsewhere —
I retaliated and released emails between her and the investor she was fucking, to tell her what was what about morals. For this, I was raided, put on the front page of the state journal and capital times that I had once worked for, and things started going sideways when a couple radio hosts were reading about it on the air and said “that’s the guy that set up our webcams” and the local rags started realizing I was one of the people who helped curate and launch the very website I was now plastered on: Madison.com . The mugshot is Britney Spears Level Meltdown material. Anyway, ALMOST every time they’ve tried setting me up someone has gone “uh, I know this guy.”
After the charges were dismissed, Toni, her husband and I would occupy the same three seats on the same American Airlines flight to New York. I did not recognize them. She sat there in silence, next to me, pale as a ghost. As we departed the plane, I read the name on her husband’s boarding pass and I , too, turned white as a ghost.
Off the plane, I looked her in the eye and told her that I hope she rots in hell.
Only one of those people had the balls to say “Look. Arrest me or get off of my fucking porch.” But even then, they drove him to near suicide at the time.
I also tried to commit suicide. I thought my life was over.
I am the user who is responsible for suggesting the “Rank and Vile” flair tag on patriots.win , and now you know why.
If Ann saw what I saw today, she would tell you this herself.
But oh, I see, it is I , who is “dangerous to Hillary Clinton’s democracy.”
Ann continued:
“Zbigniew Brzezinski, an American foreign affairs guru, says that the world is full of “these volatile, restless, politically awakened masses that continue to put more and more pressure on the system…” (1) I think that what we are witnessing is an example of Edward Lorenz’s 1972 description of continuous dynamic systems. Lorenz was a meteorologist who was trying to describe how sensitive initial conditions might grow into a large phenomenon. His metaphor example was the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil and the possible resultant tornado in Texas.”(1) Howard zinn, A People’s history of the united states 1492-Present
It was thought at the time that this theory, called the chaos theory by some, would not be amenable to application to human behavior. His mathematics have been applied to many areas since then, including human behavior.
Ann was a dissident/activist who witnessed very bad historical decisions in her lifetime. I had the pleasure of meeting Ann when I was 15 years old and on a community assignment from the SPRITE boot camp. Let’s say we met after that, too, and that I have more in common with some of my friends than I ever let on.
“Ann wanted to stick with it, there is work to be done” her best friend Barbara said, after Ann was no longer with us.
She was an activist until the end.
To those destroying our beautiful state of Wisconsin, our community, or our Planet , their attorneys and investors attorneys would rather have fifteen hemmorhoids or eat a bowl of shit, than encounter the opposition and the activism and the brimstone and fire of Ann E. Fleischli.
I am no longer willing to be a Cassandra or a mad man or a seer mumbling in a corner, nor to push a rock up a hill without any assistance as I do with 99% of my friendships and familial relationships. You don’t have to listen to me or agree with anything I say, but with or without me you need to wake the fuck up right now.
This is my plea to science, technology, engineering, medicine, and research:
“Drop your weapon.”
Nicely, please.
Additional context added 15-Nov-22: Why I am bringing up Ann? Because I know 500,000 people and she was the only ONE of them who would take my call and I was disappointed to only find out that day. Societies that destroy their sentinels deserve to be destroyed.
“Men die, but not what they stood for.”— Gil scott heron, on coming from a broken home (excerpt)