February 2011 archive

cross-posted from Sum of Change

COLUMBUS, OH: I am on the ground in Ohio, here to cover the protests for the couple days that I can afford to be away from DC. Today, despite a persistent rain, demonstrators lined the sidewalk outside of the Capitol Building in Columbus to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 5 which threatens state employees’ bargaining rights. Today’s protest was a lead up to tomorrow, when thousands are expected to descend on Columbus.

I just ordered 2 pizzas to be delivered to demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin.  Rachel Maddow has the story:

You’re probably already familiar with ordering take-out food online. Some restaurants let you do it directly and others use a middle man service, but the idea is that you log on, place your order, plug in your credit card info and tell it where to deliver the food. But there’s nothing that says you have to have the food delivered to yourself. In fact, there’s nothing that says you have to even be in the same country as the food you’ve just ordered.

And so we arrive at Ian’s Pizza by the Slice where donations literally from around the world are coming into their State Street store in the form of online pizza orders to feed Wisconsin protesters. As Politico reports, “On Saturday alone, Ian’s gave away 1,057 free slices in their store and delivered more than 300 pizzas to the Capitol itself.”

You get it.  I got it.  I sent 2 20″ 3 topping pizzas to the assembled democracy demonstrators.  Join me.  It’s easy.  You go to badgerbites.com and order a pie for the demonstrators.  You know how to order for yourself.  It’s just as easy to order for others.  Go for it.  It will make you smile.

And by the way.  This does not mean that my allegiance to Pizza Bob’s in Ann Arbor has been violated in any regard.  The way I see it, when in Madison, you do like the Badgers.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

Charles Blow of the New York Times has noticed that great sucking sound of our decadent empire in decline, and says, “It’s time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country,” because among industrialized countries “we are among the worst of the worst.”  

Zoinks, Scoob!  It used to be that Americans didn’t want to know the truth, and the media had the courtesy not to tell us.

As for the cause of this decline to this “worst of the worst” status, Blow references “an increasingly cut-throat global economy” and shows an IMF chart indicating that the US has one of the highest Gini indices (i.e., measures of inequality) amongst industrial nations, just behind Hong Kong and Singapore.

I give Blow credit for his candor, as far as it goes, but let’s go ahead an nail that thesis to the door of the Church: Everything is going to shit because capitalism is an inherently psychopathic and monomaniacal drive for profits, all else be damned, and the plutocrats are taking increasingly large everything! for themselves.

State of Working America has some interactive graphs showing average incomes of the top 10% (in red hues) and bottom 90% (in blue) of wage earners between 1917 and 2008.  Moving the vertical bars in their graphs allows the user to select and summarize intervals of interest.  Data were compiled by economist Emmanuel Saez at UC Berkeley.

From 1917 to 1970 the bottom 90% of wage earners took home 72% of income growth, whereas the top 10% earners took home 28%.  The top 1% (light pink) took the smallest proportion of growth, whereas the next two largest income earners (rose and maroon)took the largest shares of the 28% cut.

Over the past forty years or so, income inequality has ballooned.  Specifically, from 1970 to 2008, the top 10% wage earners took home all the growth in incomes.  The top 1% took the majority of that growth.  The bottom 90% got nothing.  For the past 40 years, the vast majority and poorest Americans have gotten nothing.  Bupkis.  Goose eggs. Zilch.  All the money has gone to the very top, the worst of the worst, for forty fucking years.

Our regular featured content-

• Six In The Morning by mishima
• On This Day In History by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat
• Evening Edition by ek hornbeck
• Prime Time by ek hornbeck

And these articles-

• Reporting the Revolution: They Will Not Be Silenced (Up Date) by TheMomCat
• Pique the Geek 20110220: Phase Transitions by Translator
• Monday Business Edition by ek hornbeck (a weekly feature)
• From Egypt to Wisconsin with Love by TheMomCat

The Stars Hollow Gazette

In March 2002 NATO launched Operation Anaconda in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, and most of the heavy fighting played out in the Zurmat District of that God-forsaken wasteland, where the Haqqani Network and other militias still continue to attack NATO outposts and each other and virtually every other living thing, and NATO adds its fair share to the carnage.

We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families,” Brigadier General Eric Tremblay, spokesman for NATO-led forces, said in the statement. The three women were killed during the shooting, NATO said.

NATO had earlier said its troops had found the women already killed, bound and gagged, but later acknowledged that this was untrue. Troops who visited the scene had made the mistake after seeing the bodies bound in preparation for burial, it said.

There are a lot of orphans in Paktia Province.

Regular Daily Features:

• Cream starts the day in Late Night Karaoke, mishima DJs
• Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! at Six in the Morning!!!

Essays Featured Monday, February 21^st:

• RiaD brings Monday Open Thoughts about slow leisurely awakenings
• then turns to thoughts  on carrots & empathy
• A hopeful piece from slksfca: “I have lived to regret the decision”
• Firefly Memories 1.0 is where Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays of our first years posts, highlighting those which exemplify our firefly-dreaming spirit and mission.  
  
  Today:What To Do With The Leftover People?  

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

February 19, 2011

I just caught this a short while ago and just in time to stream most of the press conference, without even finishing my first pot of coffee.

Did some searching and found a couple of reports, more are being added as I type this, as well as the UNEP site page with the full report broken down in sections to download, read and study.

One doesn’t need to believe in ‘Climate Change’, using the label ‘global warming’ in a simplistic way to feed the detraction of the obvious, detractors of advancing technologies and individual advancements and dreams have always been around. Developing, long over due and argued about, the technologies and finding the possible new means to the goals of a cleaner planet and cleaner living are just the same as any advancements man has made as we’ve evolved.

Greening should help bring about cleaner living. Greening should stop many of mans conflicts {think national securities and the continued growth of hatreds} on his fellow man, who will go to war to try and control anothers sun or wind,or what other possibilities can be found to cleaner energy needs through other advancing technologies and not with fossil fuels or anothers mineral assets.

Advancing to green economies brings growth, everywhere, as well as the needed trades and expertise to be able to carry out the advancement needs. Developing and growing towards cleaner living, cleaner manufacturing, cleaner air, cleaner water and much more, a cleaner and possibly less hostile planet.

Gaddafi regime: We will fight to the end

 

Dictator’s son warns of civil war during rambling TV address as violent protests spread to Libyan capital

By Catrina Stewart and Kim Sengupta  Monday, 21 February 2011

In a a sign that the first cracks are starting to show in the Libyan regime, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son warned in a lengthy and rambling address broadcast live last night that the overthrow of the regime would lead to civil war and the break-up of the country.

The address by Saif Gaddafi, who is viewed as reform-minded in the West, came as the first major anti-government protests spread to the capital, Tripoli, striking at the heart of the regime and making Colonel Gaddafi’s 42-year hold on power appear increasingly precarious.

A lot of people here are good at exposing maggots, and it’s scary to see what’s under the rocks.  Necessary, but scary. If we don’t know what’s under the rocks, we have no chance of defeating it.  And there are surely plenty of rocks to kick and maggots to expose.

But it’s not enough to expose maggots.  We must also plant grass.  Otherwise, our landscape will be just a lot of upturned rocks and dirt.

Most people aren’t devils or gods, they’re just ordinary shmoes trying to get along in the world, not thinking too much, just putting food on the table and themselves in a chair before a TV.  They listen to what their leaders say because it’s easy, and they don’t question because that’s hard.

Winning the hearts and minds of the leaders of the opposition may be impossible- the Koch brothers are not going to become liberals, Glenn Beck is not going to become sane; but winning the hearts and minds of these people – the ordinary people – is possible.  We just have to plant some grass.

I have some ideas.  But not nearly enough.  I need your help – this community’s help.  Together we do have the brains, the talent, and the wherewithal to plant a lot of grass. The seeds are there.

I have sometimes played a game with myself:

Suppose you had a fortune.  A Gates-like fortune.  What would you do?

One thing I’d like to do is start rewarding acts that promote a civil society.  What do I mean?  What acts would promote such a society?  It could be a lot of things.  Here are some examples

      NOT IN OUR TOWN is the inspiring documentary film about the residents of Billings, Montana who responded to an upsurge in hate violence by standing together for a hate-free community. In 1993, hate activities in Billings reached a crescendo. KKK fliers were distributed, the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, the home of a Native American family was painted with swastikas, and a brick was thrown through the window of a six-year-old boy who displayed a Menorah for Hanukkah.

      Rather than resigning itself to the growing climate of hate, the community took a stand. The police chief urged citizens to respond before the violence escalated any further. Religious groups from every denomination sponsored marches and candlelight vigils. The local labor council passed a resolution against racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Members of the local Painters Union pitched in to paint over racist graffiti. The local newspaper printed full-page Menorahs that were subsequently displayed in nearly 10,000 homes and businesses. The community made an unmistakable declaration: “Not in Our Town.” Since then, no serious acts of hate violence have been reported in Billings.

You can buy the film here

There are other people like that police chief.  People we don’t hear about.  Let’s find them.  Let’s reward them.  Let’s give them publicity.  

Or what happened to the people in a small town in Tennessee where one person decided they didn’t know enough about differences: I wrote about the great film that came out of this.  I really hope you’ll click on that story, but, briefly, a school principal in a small, all-white, all Christian town in TN decided that she, and the teachers and student in her school, didn’t know enough about differences.  They decided to collect a paper clip for every person who died in the concentration camps.  What happened next…..well….read the diary and see the film.

Let’s distribute those films. Buy a copy or two.  Send them off to someone somewhere.  

Sometimes the acts are mind-blowingly heroic – like those of Irena Sendler (don’t know who she is?  The answer is a click away).  But sometimes they are the simple acts of random kindness that go on each day, that we see, here and there. Good acts.  Acts that promote tolerance.  Acts that promote a civil society.

These people are rare, but they aren’t unknown.  Even if only 1 in 1,000 Americans are like that – well that’s 300,000 people.  We can find them.  We can publicize them.

It’s necessary, of course, to expose the maggots.  I applaud the work that many kossacks do to expose them.  But, while it is necessary to expose the maggots, it is our own act of bigotry to assume that everything that lives under the rock is and always will be a maggot.  Some are just people who have never seen light.  

Another is the simple acts of random kindness that go on each day, that we see, here and there.  Good acts.  Acts that promote tolerance.  Acts that promote a civil society.

Thanks for reading