Playing for Keeps | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine.
Noam Chomsky: ‘US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia’ | World news | The Guardian.
War, Peace and Obama’s Nobel — In These Times. Also by Chomsky.
Free Speech Radical — In These Times.
If this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I’ll tell you something—the faculty are the workers, and we’re the raw materials. But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to have any process on us, don’t mean to be made into any product, don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor—be they anyone. We’re human beings!
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who own the machine that until you are free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Can the Rich Really Save Us? — In These Times.
t r u t h o u t | Market-Driven Hysteria and the Politics of Death. Can’t wait for this guy’s book.
t r u t h o u t | Democracy and Capitalism Are NOT One and the Same.
Truthdig – Reports – Sen. George McGovern on the Presidency From Lincoln to Obama.
Feminist artist Nancy Spero has died at the age of 83. She has written:
An Insider’s View of the Fort Hood Tragedy – Boing Boing.
Democrats To Allow Vote On Amendment Restricting Abortion Coverage In Hopes Of Ultimately Passing Health Care Bill – Health Care – Jezebel. Same kind of thing just happened on WW. Politicians should have to watch the show as that is how so many citizens relate to DC actions.
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Tagged: art, economy, environment, health.care, war
Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ll try and do better, I’m currently working on a real update.
****
BBC – Today – The death of language?.
BBC – Newsbeat – New maps show population hotspots.
Truthdig – Reports – Obama Can’t Lose the Young.
Truthdig – Reports – A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction.
t r u t h o u t | Republicans Are Irrelevant to Health Care Reform.
t r u t h o u t | Truthout Interview With Ralph Nader: “Only the Rich Can Save Us”.
The Feministing Five: Michael Kimmel – Feministing.
Ten Years After Seattle — In These Times.
Carl Honore: In Praise Of Slow Sex.
video of a dance company my friend just joined:
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Tagged: barack.obama, economy, health.care, sex., unions
The Rights of Corporations//NYTimes um, batshit crazy?
In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. “Few of us are only our economic interests,” she said. “We have beliefs. We have convictions.” Corporations, “engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging,” she said.
Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: “A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests.” Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are “indistinguishable from the individual who owns them.”
Globalization Goes Bankrupt//TruthDig
Clinton on Gore: “I Thought He Was in Neverland”//Mother Jones I’ll listen to any dish involving Maureen Dowd.
Clinton: Don’t Ask Dems to “Commit Suicide” With Climate Bill//Mother Jones
“I still think the president should try really hard to pass climate change legislation this year, in addition to health care,” he said. Without passing it, he said, the U.S. will appear “long in the tooth… We need to be tomorrow’s country.”
A Clunker, Not a Cadillac//TruthDig “Finally, a healthcare proposal George W. Bush could love.”
Are Young Workers Ready for Unions (and Vice Versa)?//InTheseTimes
We need to revitalize and unify labor at every level. We need to reach out to unorganized workers –especially those under 35 — who, for whatever reason, don’t see us as the answer to the economic problems they face.
It’s not that today’s young people don’t like unions; it’s just that they really don’t know about us. Their images come from the movies and corporate America. And that’s our fault.
Our message needs to resonate across generational lines. For the first time in history, we have four generations in our movement as active and retired workers, ranging from those whose lives were shaped by the great depression and World War II, to the well-documented baby boomers, to Generation X, and to the millennials, those born in the 1980s and later.
There is a world of difference in their life experiences. As we saw in the report on younger workers issued by the AFL-CIO last week, one in three worries about finding a permanent full-time job with benefits. And an equal number are still living with their parents. How many of you can relate?
Vintage Sexism: 1943 Guide to Hiring Women Feministing.com
Facebook Stalking: Isn’t it Romantic?//Jezebel
Is America Hooked on War? The Nation
Up 131%, And Still Going
Tell Us Something We Don’t Know, Now What Are You Going To Do About It Dept.: A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found the average family premium for health insurance rose to $13,375 last year, a jump of 5% even as inflation fell .7%. That makes for an obscene rise of 131% over the past ten years, when wages increased only 38%. One more time: public option, anyone?
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Tagged: environment, facebook, health.care, unions, war
Being inspired by GarlandGrey.com, I thought about writing a few monographs and submitting them to the website to be published. Unfortunately, I have not been able to finish a full piece yet, but here are some snipits.
strangers, in nothing but their underwear enter a hot, moist room. it is empty, except for a few absorbent mats, some towels. some bring in their water bottles, others coconut juice, electrolyte enhanced water, or have a naturally healthy level of endurance and hydration. for ninety minutes they, together, enter into a trance, focusing on each of their sweaty body parts as they move from position, to position, to position. resting every few positions, on their backs, deep breathing as they just stare at the ceiling eyes open before getting back into the act. worn out, they all finally finish and enter final relaxation. when they find the strength, they move from the hot room, to the cold showers. open but segregated, they cleanse themselves and exit back into the world.
european bath-house? no. bikram yoga.
in my own loneliness, i have found the secret to twitter’s success. there are many people like me: out in the world, living their lives and wishing there was someone they could share their funny commentary with, but alas they are alone. when i’m out with friends, you can tell, because there is a tweet-pause. when i’m alone, a twittergasm. i feel weird tweeting when i can just say what i’m thinking outloud to my friend, yes sometimes i tweet with company, but usually after the announcement “imma tweet that.” a friend of mine in real life and on twitter, will often tweet something then txt me simultaneously, i’m always wishing she had tweeted both, this way we could have a public conversation, like we’re at a dinner party with 124 others: random people we passed on campus, some close friends who never tweet just follow, and the porno people.
twitter, well, that’s that and then you hit a new low of loneliness, when you have to say it out loud. i was signing up for my gym membership and the customer service specialist needed to go finalize my papers at the front desk, “while i head up to the front, you can fill out five friends that you want to give a free month to.” “oh, that’s nice, do they have to live in the area.” “uh, yeah, its a free month here at this location.” “oh…[very long awkward pause]..i don’t know five people.” “well, that’s fine just one or two works too.” … “i, um, i don’t even know one person, so…” “oh, that sucks. kind of a waste of free offers than. you can just sit here and i wait, i guess.”
thanks, jackass.
**
Also there is: the love email, capital letters, the “love you” without the “I”. More soon.
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Tagged: writing., yoga
Obama Leaves Bush-Cheney Repressive Apparatus Standing | The Progressive.
An Obama Quid Pro Quo for Labor’s Support? – Working In These Times.
Local First: A Strategy For Employee Free Choice – Working In These Times.
Truthdig – Reports – Jimmy Carter Is Right.
Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.
Hannah Arendt
t r u t h o u t | “We Made Them Millions, and They Complain About Insurance”.
Anything but early marriage is a “relationship wasteland” – Feministing. Yay!
“Don’t You Just Love Your [Insert Ethnicity] Nanny?” – Labor – Jezebel.
Enough With This Crap About Women’s Unhappiness – Women’s unhappiness – Jezebel.
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Tagged: michelle.obama, new.media, television.shows, unions, weddings
Furloughs Balance State Budgets—on Backs of Critical Workers//In These Times Story of my life…really this is my life right now.
Militarizing Latin America//In These Times//Noam Chomsky
Obama Banking Too Much On Banks//Mother Jones author was on Democracy Now today.
Business Goes To School//Truthdig for Liz.
The Bailouts: An Accounting an interactive graphic from the NYTimes that breaks down all the bailouts.
The New Illiteracy in American Life: Democracy and Politics in the Age of the Spectacle//t r u t h o u t//
from our classrooms and the screen culture of reality television to the barrage of violent video games and the bloodletting in sports such as popular wrestling – endlessly at work in developing modes of masculinity that celebrate toughness, violence, cruelty, moral indifference and misogyny. All of these forces, whose educational influence should never be underestimated, constitute a new type of illiteracy, a kind of civic illiteracy in which it becomes increasingly impossible to connect the everyday problems that people face with larger social forces – thus depoliticizing their own sense of agency and making politics itself an empty gesture. Is it any wonder that politics is now mediated through a spectacle of anger, violence, humiliation and rage that mimics the likes of the Jerry Springer Show? It is not that we have become a society of the spectacle – though that is partly true – but that we have fallen prey to a new kind of illiteracy in which the distinction between illusion and reality is lost, just as the ability to experience our feelings of discontent and our fears of uncertainty are reduced to private troubles, paralyzing us in a sea of resentment, waiting to be manipulated by extremists extending from religious fanatics to right-wing radio hosts. This is a prescription for a kind of rage that looks for easy answers, demands a heightened emotional release and resents any attempts to think through the connection between our individual woes and any number of larger social forces, including an unchecked system of finance, the anti-democratic power of the corporate state, the rise of multinationals and the destruction of the manufacturing base or the privatization of public schooling along with its devaluing of education as a public good. As the public collapses into the personal, the personal becomes “the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence”;[1] the formative educational and political conditions that make a democracy possible begin to disappear.
Change We Still Need//Common Dreams//PEER where is Obama on the green promises he made?
Questions for Seth MacFarlane::Family Man//NYTimes “Question: You’re A Dick. What Are Your Thoughts On That?”
“Lettuce With A Side Of Batshit” Less Lucrative Than Actual Food I was obviously attracted to this Jezebel article because the title contains “batshit”
The Narcissism Epidemic Article Epidemic is Getting Annoying again via Jezebel.
Could I pull this off:
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Tagged: batshit.crazy, economy, environment, health, new.media, television.shows, war
In honor of my one-month anniversary here in California, photos from my drive here [via iPhone, mind you]:
leaving texas.
colorado.
towards denver.
co to wy.
wy.
continential divide.
in my rearview disappearing now.
storms heading into utah.
salt flats.
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democracy.now splice. listen.with.me