Here’s the thing you start to get when you hang around an occupation: it isn’t perfect. It isn’t supposed to be perfect. ... Its utopianism is driven not by some postapocalyptic or prelapserian ideal, but by something immediate and ... tactical. It’s a utopia that glimmers briefly here and there, and only in the present—and yet is in dialogue with the past as well as the future.
As far as major protests go, the United States experienced a period of relative quiet from 1980 until 2011. For 30 years after Ronald Reagan broke the PATCO strike, “class war” in America was largely one sided. America’s working class took hit after hit without much in the way of a response.
By Donal on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 11:54pm | Social Justice
Friday night I went to Occupy Baltimore (OB). OB's website had a Gender and Race Equality Rally scheduled for 6:30 PM and the usual General Assembly at 8:00 PM. I hadn't been there in the evening before, and thought it was about time to actually see a General Assembly.
Is this what democracy looks like? That’s perhaps the first question prompted by the swirl of tents, signs, news choppers and police motorcycles that have colored the Occupy Wall Street protests. But there are two other questions we should be asking as well. Is democracy even possible in a context of extreme instability and social inequality, in which 1 percent of the population owns and polices the other 99 percent?
With cardboard signs asking, "Do You Owe China Money?" and declaring "The Middle Class is Gone," a handful of area residents have taken inspiration from Occupy Wall Street and have occupied Tuckahoe Park in Altoona.
[Andrew Sullivan] I can't put it better than this longtime Dish reader:
Personally, I am praying that Obama's messaging improves drastically. (It has failed on multiple occasions - not the least of which was during August/September of 2008.)
A lot of strangers are thrust together at the Occupy camps, and I had read that a woman complained about being hit on by three different men on her first visit to the Occupy Baltimore (OB) site. So it isn't a surprise that OB would take steps to deal with the problem of sexual harassment. But yesterday's Baltimore Sun carries this article, 'Occupy' memo could discourage victims from reporting assaults:
By Donal on Wed, 10/19/2011 - 7:39pm | Humor & Satire
Paul Solman interviewed former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson on the PBS News Hour this evening. I often read Johnson and James Kwak at their blog, Baseline Scenario. Towards the end Solman and his cohost urged viewers to watch this video, The Ballad of Diamond Jim on Youtube.
The video is annotated by Solman and Johnson below.
Conservationists and policymakers agree that there's no better time than now to consider planning for the state's urgent water needs.
"We have had the historic combination of heat, drought and wildfires this past summer, which has put secure, safe water supplies at the forefront of important issues facing our state," said Laura Huffman, executive director of the Nature Conservancy of Texas. "Now is the time to act and fund the water plan. And instead of asking the question, 'How much water can I have?' the question should be, 'How much water do I need?'"
Canada has joined the ranks of exporting oil nations and now supplies more petroleum to the United States than Mexico or Saudi Arabia. The unconventional character of mined bitumen as well as the startling revenue it generates for government coffers has irrevocably changed the country. Five per cent of the nation's GDP comes from oil while bitumen makes up 25 per cent of the nation's exports.
Months before the first occupiers descended on Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, before the news trucks arrived and the unions endorsed, before Michael Bloomberg and Michael Moore and Kanye West made appearances, a group of artists, activists, writers, students, and organizers gathered on the fourth floor of 16 Beaver Street, an artists' space near Wall Street, to talk about changing the world. There were New Yorkers in the room, but also Egyptians, Spaniards, Japanese, Greeks.
By Donal on Tue, 10/18/2011 - 10:41am | Humor & Satire
Andy Murray hasn't lost a match since the US Open. He led Great Britain over Hungary in Davis Cup, beat Donald Young to win Bangkok, beat Rafa Nadal to win Tokyo, and just defeated David Ferrer 7-5, 6-4 to win the Shanghai Open - worth 1000 points - and now replaces Roger Federer as World #3.
[Erik Curren] I know I shouldn’t be at all emotional, but honestly, I find myself a bit verklempt about moving my bank accounts out of Bank of America.
When McDonald's franchisee Tom Wolf built his latest restaurant in Huntington, W. Va., late last year, he installed two chargers for all-electric cars so customers could juice their batteries while eating. So far, the charging station has been used a few times.
"It's for the future," says Mr. Wolf, who spent $6,385 on chargers that are about the size and shape of a parking meter. He doesn't know anyone in Huntington who owns a plug-in car but expects that will change once electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf become more widely available. ...
[Steve's rant to other IT folk] I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It's pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.
[John Michael Greer] In a post last year, I discussed Adolf Hitler, whose career is among the best documented examples both of the power and of the pitfalls of political thaumaturgy.
