Blog Archives
Episode 10: American Privilege w/ Alma Ohene-Opare
Alma Ohene-Opare, husband, father of four, entrepreneur, patriot, joins us today to share his story on becoming a U.S. citizen and his thoughts and beliefs on how we can make positive change here in America. I was so honored to have him on the show and hope you all give it a listen as he has definitely changed my outlook on things. Please like, share, and rate the podcast!
Ian Get Up..Something Happened.. There’s Been A Crash.. (audio version)
I did something different by reading and recording my story that I wrote several years ago reflecting back on 9/11. The link is below, select your preferred platform of Spotify or Apple Podcast (Anchor if you don’t use either of those two). Please share and thank you!
Small Town Famous Podcast!
Didn’t know I had a podcast? Well now ya do! Give it a listen! Small Town Famous: Coffee, Bourbon & the Grit In-Between. All sorts of nonsense for your listening pleasure.
New Episode!
☕️🥃🗣🇺🇸🤙🏽 I use Spotify Greenroom for the first time to interview a good friend of mine, Officer Tay Zer from Pep Spray PD. We discuss moderately the perspective of an active Police Officer and his thoughts and opinions on the last year and half, from pre/early post George Floyd/Breonna Taylor days to now. I’ve always wanted to do an episode with an police officer as I feel we are constantly beat with the opinions of keyboard warriors and corrupt news media and we never really hear from those on the blue line. We shoot the shit in a justified manner for about an hour. Give us a listen! https://anchor.fm/smalltownfamous/episodes/Spotify-Greenroom-Interview-with-Officer-Tay-Zer-e13el1u
History Repeats Itself
Another quickie on politics and current events. Tonight I give a brief history lesson and compare it to recent events. I also read off some super peaceful statements given by celebrities over the last few years as well as some newly surfaced information. Stay tuned and keep the love coming! Thank you all! IG: @smalltown.famous
Mentioned links: https://mainstreetgazette.com/kamala-harris-endorsed-insurrections-by-the-lefts-own-standards-she-must-be-removed/
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/smalltownfamous/episodes/History-Repeats-Itself-eorpmd
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6aFdlPNvefcey4iUOX5gCW?si=_X7p-9seQ56LgI97wsVvTg
One Nation, Under Surveillance
I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under surveillance, always divided, for liberty and justice for all.
Waking Up
It’s five o’clock in the morning. My alarm fades in slowly with the song “Waking Up” by Explosions In The Sky. I usually wake up this early to take my wife to work so it’s nothing out of the ordinary. She’s a hard worker. I admire that.
The morning is quiet. I like it.
It’s always quiet this early. It’s quiet because our little world hasn’t started up yet. The rest of the world has, but not ours. I like to absorb the quiet after dropping my wife off. The cats usually sleep in and the dogs tend to hop right back on the bed and pass out. I start my morning by making myself a spam omelette and a coffee with three sugars. I don’t add much creamer now days, I guess I’ve out grown it.
After my meal, I take my coffee and sit down at my desk. I call it the command center. It’s the central processor of my stronghold. My “Jarvis”.
“Good morning sir”
I say to myself out loud in a British “Jarvis” voice as my desktop comes to life. By now the faint blue daylight begins to filter over the mountain view that greets me every morning. I open my web browser and log into my usual social medias. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, & WordPress.
I am plugged in.
A Storm Is Coming
The news feed. A constantly evolving digital wave of opinions, ideas, beliefs, products, pictures, and sometimes pointless nonsense. The list goes on. It’s where our lives are written out and recorded in real time. It’s brilliant and truly wonderful.
It’s also a war zone.
A battlefield with multiple factions shelling the living shit out of each other day and night.
The quiet is over.
#Trump2016, #feelthebern, #blacklivesmatter, #hillary2016, #GOPdebate. Hashtags thrown around like hand grenades. Alliances are formed and relationships destroyed as easy as “unfriend”. You’re in the trenches and you’re as powerful as ever because you’re behind a keyboard. You no longer have to share an opinion face to face. You’re safe and secure because you’re in the matrix. Memes are like propaganda bombs filled with false or exaggerated facts about opposing parties but good job bro, really stuck it to em with that one!
We’re all guilty of it really. It’s all part of it. But I find it hard to take a side in all this. I mean I have my beliefs and I have my reasons for who I will vote for but I can’t seem to label it. You can’t claim to be a Republican anymore without being labeled a racist or bigot. You can’t claim to be a Democrat without being labeled a lazy liberal. You can’t fly a Tea Party flag without being called a tea bagger.
When did we lose ourselves? When did we go from a melting pot to a pot of water with individual groups of oil floating around? There’s so many groups and labels that we’ve started to suffocate in it all. We’ve lost sight of who the true enemy is and we are too busy climbing on top of one another as we grasp for air and try to soak up the lime light even if it’s for a quick second. It’s exhausting and like I said before….we’ve looked away from the true enemy and they are reaping all the benefits from it.
Human Qualities
Edward Snowden.
He was born on June 21st, 1983 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He is a former CIA employee as well as a former employee for Booz Allen Hamilton which is a company contracted by the NSA. He’s widely known for the **“theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person”.
** source via wikipedia
Recently I read Glenn Greenwalds book “No Place Left To Hide” which covers what happened when Snowden contacted Greenwald about the documents he had obtained.
“…Opposition to government invasion of privacy was a major factor in the establishment of the United States itself, as American colonists protested laws that let British officials ransack at will any home they wished…”
Greenwald said.
The Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person’s or things to be seized.”
As Greenwald said,
“It was intended, above all, to abolish forever in America the power of the government to subject its citizens to generalized, suspicionless surveillance.”
I also read that in the mid-nineteenth century, British government began opening its citizens mail, due to the development of rail ways and rapid delivery, which caused a major scandal in the UK. By the mid 1970s, Frank Church investigated the FBI and found that they had labeled a half a million US citizens as potential “subversives” and had spied on people based on their political affiliations.
Snowden handed documents over to Greenwald providing information about the US government partnering with providers, allowing them to sift through emails, messages, video chats, phone calls, voicemails and other means of communication. The data collected is then stored for access whenever they wanted. These major providers include; Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Paltalk, Youtube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. This was a project called PRISM, which allows NSA to collect data directly from servers.
Actual leaked NSA slide provided by Edward Snowden. NOFORN at the bottom right means no foreign governments/companies can see this slide.
Do you feel comfortable with that? If you are, you’ve already lost.
Some other things Snowden discovered was the governments ability to activate your phone’s microphone and camera capabilities even if it was connected to the internet or not. Greenwald met Snowden in Hong Kong along with two other reporters. They composed articles and stories for their publisher to release to the world. The story caught like a wild fire. The government has never denied the accusations.
A Song of Our Fathers
To say this story is mere conspiracy theory is only, to me, words used by those in denial. Civil liberties groups, Wikipedia, and many more have filed lawsuits against the NSA. That list can be found here. Edward Snowden found something terribly wrong with our government and felt that it was time the people finally had proof that they are watched, spied on, recorded and documented. Our government states that it’s for the greater good of the country. To help catch those who plot and plan to destroy our way of life. So once again I ask you, are you comfortable with this? If you have nothing to hide, them you have nothing to fear right? You have already lost.
Greenwald said..
“Governments around the world have made vigorous attempts to train citizens to disdain their own privacy. A litany of now-familiar platitudes has convinced people to tolerate sever encroachments into their private realm; so successful are these justifications that many people applaud as the authorities collect vast amounts of data about what they say, read, buy and do-and with whom”
If you are okay with it, then accept and admit that you are submissive. Submission, to me, is an act of something as low, if not lower than that of something on a microbial level. Yes it is true that there is nothing we can do about it, verbally anyway. This very article will be flagged and possibly looked at given the very contents contained in it, even though it is not even scratching the surface. I did that so you could research yourself and learn a bit.
Trembling Hands
While we squabble about, lobbing verbal abuses towards opposing parties on the constant stream of our news feeds that’s ever flowing. I hope one day the rest of us come to light that we divide ourselves because we let them. We are doing exactly what they want us to do and that is to remain as separate little twigs. A single twig is weak, but a bundle of twigs is strong. We are not a bundle. I fear we are broken and will be for some time. We vote for celebrities, not politicians. We form opinions off of trending topics without actually doing research and when some do research, they read one side of the story. We read media headlines that dice up, alter, and change what’s said to what they want you to read because they know you’ll only read the headline anyway. We watch as candidates dig up dirt on one another and bash each other in their debates. It’s a shame we’ve lost our ability to recognize when something isn’t right. That we now think rebellion on a violent level is an act of terrorism. That we are growing comfortable of the thought of being unarmed. That it’s okay for them to search our lives without reason. We scare too easily. We have weakened. I won’t give up on the country, but to be honest I feel that electing someone,no matter who it is, wont change anything on the grand scale that needs to happen.
Sources I used for this mini article were:
Wikipedia, Google, and the book “No Place Left To Hide” by Glenn Greenwald
Also check out the preview for Oliver Stones ‘Snowden’
Small Town Famous 