Rants & Primers. Below is a list of articles written which I feel every progressive, or at least people who still believe in reason and evolution, should read. I have chosen them for their ability to cut through the clutter of academic and philosophical verbiage, and get right to higher truth about the insane and dangerous phenomenon of American Extreme Right Wing Politics. Hofstaeder once called them the "Radical Right. " That might have been appropriate in the 1960s, but today, corporate-backed lobbying armies and influence merchants, using a Fox News fueled media hysteria and a small army of populist demagogues have transformed them into what I call the "Rabid Right," or the "Hatriots Movement. " Note: If you like this sort of compendium, you may also may want to see my "Essays Every Progressive Should Read" page. [table-of-content] What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century.
The Wrecking Crew. Standing in the gap: Health care reform may come too late for some. All focus has shifted in the health care debate from whether there will be reform at all to whether the final version will contain a strong, robust, affordable public option. This is a good debate to have. I’ve weighed in with opinions on why I believe the public option is essential to any reform package, and why I believe the current buzz about allowing states to opt out of a public option is a bad idea. But the public option should not be the sole focus of the discussion in the weeks going forward. No matter what passes, most health care reform provisions will not be effective until the year 2013.
That’s the first year exchanges are available and the first year insurers will be banned from excluding anyone on the basis of pre-existing conditions. That’s all fine and well if you’re employed, and your employer is large enough to provide a decent choice of plans and coverage. President Obama’s September 9th speech to the Joint Session of Congress held this promise: Rep. Twitter shuts down 33 fake accounts created by state Republicans in an attempt to lambast Dems. Free Twitter Backgrounds. Richard Ackland. I hope no one missed this week's legal excitement in London. The British oil trading company Trafigura managed to get a ''super-injunction'' to prevent reporting of the findings into its dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast's biggest city, Abidjan.
Thousands were injured by waste containing tonnes of phenols, hydrogen sulphide, corrosive caustic soda and quantities of mercaptans. Trafigura denied it was dangerous, but nonetheless paid £100 million ($175 million) to the Ivory Coast Government to clean up the mess and agreed to compensation of £1000 each for the 30,000 people made ill. All this was accompanied by actions for libel and injunctions. Last month The Guardian published claimed evidence that the company tried to conceal the scale of the pollution. The media still cannot publish the findings of the Minton Report's investigation of the scandal - one of the most appalling injunctions in recent memory. Advertisement What happened next was the explosive bit.
Everything You Wanted To Know About the Twitterverse OR (If you don’t understand that it’s impossible to fully understand Twitter…well, then you don’t understand Twitter.) Best LTE Ever. How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website. Learn how to embed videos, mp3 music, Flash videos (both swf and flv), pictures, fonts, spreadsheets, charts, maps and everything else into your blog or website. Learn how to embed almost anything in your HTML web pages from Flash videos to Spreadsheets to high resolution photographs to static images from Google Maps and more. Embed RSS Feeds in Web Pages Go to this page, replace the feed URL with your own feed, use the default color scheme or change it to something else and then click Get Code. You’ll get a JavaScript snippet that can be easily placed in the sidebar of your blog. If you like to embed feeds from multiple sources, merge all of them into one using Yahoo Pipes and then pass the combined feed to the Google Gadget.
Embed High Quality or HD YouTube Videos To embed a high resolution version of YouTube clip in your web pages, first make sure that “Watch in High Quality” or “Watch in HD” link exists next to the YouTube player as most videos are only available in standard format. Tweet Response to Hatriots, S... Contact Congress or The White House « AlinskyDefeater's Blog. How to talk to complete idiots / Three basic options. Choose wisely, lest you go totally insane. There are three basic ways to talk to complete idiots.
The first is to assail them with facts, truths, scientific data, the commonsensical obviousness of it all. You do this in the very reasonable expectation that it will nudge them away from the ledge of their more ridiculous and paranoid misconceptions because, well, they're facts, after all, and who can dispute those? Why, idiots can, that's who. It is exactly this sort of logical, levelheaded appeal to reason and mental acuity that's doomed to fail, simply because in the idiotosphere, facts are lies and truth is always dubious, whereas hysteria and alarmism resulting in mysterious undercarriage rashes are the only things to be relied upon. Examples? You are, of course, insane beyond belief to try this, but sometimes you just can't help it.
But it's not just the fundamentalists. Remember, facts do not matter. This is, as you already sense, a dangerous trap, pure intellectual quicksand. But you'd also be missing the point. FontCapture Turns Your Handwriting into a Font - Fonts - Lifehacker. Socialsupport / Workaround for Twitter @Replies Issue. Home | Back to Twitter Tips First Appeared: May 14th, 2009 About this Article This article was distilled from several tech-articles and tests by several people. It was not meant to explain all the nuances of the issue, but only what most Twitter users need to know to ensure that their public replies are seen by all of their followers when they expect them to be.
(discussed more in Updates). Note: This site is being slowed moved to my shoqvalue.com site. Many of these twitter related tips can be found there . For recent updates on this issue, follow twitter.com/shoq Background For reasons known only to Twitter, their handling off @replynames is in transition from something most people understood, to a new and convoluted process that has confused almost everyone. If you really need to real the whole weird backstory, as written by geeks who will confuse you with pointless jargon and concepts you have no use for, just start here: See the problem?
How To: Backup And Search All Your Friends' Tweets In Google Reader. I just set up an automatic backup of all 3000 of my friends’ Twitter messages and became able to search through their Twitter history two years into the past with just five minutes of easy clicking. Only two things are required: Dave Winer’s new Twitter OPML tool and a Google Reader account. Twitter’s search engine only goes back about a week and a half. Sometimes you want to retrieve a message you saw, or get a feeling for what your circle of friends said about something, from longer ago than that.
We wrote yesterday about 10 Ways To Archive Your Tweets. The next step is to archive the Tweets of everyone else you find of interest, and make them searchable. Last week RSS forefather Dave Winer wrote and posted a little tool for pulling any Twitter user’s friends list out of Twitter and saving it as an OPML file. OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language and in this case it’s just a bundle of RSS feeds than can be moved around in bulk.
How to Make it Happen Caveats. Find a twibbon for your twitter avatar - Start Something! - Twibbon.com. StumbleUpon WebToolbar - mental_floss Blog & He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died. Rising Hegemon. What To Do When Twitter Goes Down | SheGeeks.net. Man oh man, the blogosphere is having a field day with the latest Twitter takedown by DDoS attacks. Twitter wasn’t the only service affected either (Google, Facebook, FriendFeed, Youtube, Livejournal, and Blogger). If your panties have been in a wad over the downtime of these services, here are a few tips on what you can do to avoid the panic and stay out of it: Tip #1: Move Those Connections This is something you should’ve done a long time ago. The sooner you do it, the easier it will be to continue to do as your connections grow. Add them into Gmail (or whatever email service you’re using), or move them to another service outside of the hyped networks.
Back up those important connections and start saving email addresses, asking for them, and moving messages behind the limelight into your inbox. Tip #2: Find Another Community To Join Tip #3: Blog! Yeah, you still have one of those to maintain. Tip #4: Get Off The Computer Tip #5 / Conclusion: Get A Life. About Me « Benefits @ Work. Unemployed: A Memoir. Demand the Impossible! Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of imposed social hierarchy, including the state and Capitalism.
These philosophies use 'anarchy' to mean a society based on voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Philosophical anarchist thought does not advocate chaos or anomie — it intends "anarchy" to refer to a manner of human relations that is intentionally established and maintained. As Benjamin Tucker put it, anarchism is the philosophy that "all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the state and should be abolished".
One common use of the English word anarchy is "a state of lawlessness or political disorder", otherwise known as anomie. This use of the word implies a broad definition: usually, any situation where there is no internationally recognized government is considered anarchy. See Main Article: Anarcho-Syndicalism Main Article: social ecology. The Ruckus Society : Index. TWEET TWEET!! Reading - The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.
Decolonizing solidarity. Mao, the Japanese, and the Imperialists: which bastards to back « Directionless Bones. Who was fighting in the 2nd World War? And which side was the right one, and which wrong? In this post I want to explore these questions (not entirely conclusively) with focus on China/East Asia, and in light of the reflections I reflected a couple of days ago.
The second world war is often presented as being between two sides – the Axis and the Allies (perhaps with the latter split into the Western and Soviet camps). But I think it makes more sense to see it as a three-way conflict, because in many, perhaps most, of the countries invaded by the Axis powers’ expansion, those who fought against them were just as opposed to, and opposed by, the Allies. The most obvious and prominent example is the Chinese Communist Party, who were the main resistance to the Japanese in China but had to also fight against the Nationalists who were supported by the Allies. Similar things occurred to a lesser extent in many other countries, such as the Philippines, Greece, France and Yugoslavia. Soooo…. So. Liquidbooks / Chapter 1: Neoliberal Arts and the 21st Century University. An Introduction There are a great many things that students learn from their instructors in college, but one area where they may exceed their professors is in their assessment of the state of higher education.
They do not know, necessarily, what the University has been or what it might become, but my own experience as a teacher suggests that they know very well what it is now. To provide a little bit of background, I teach at Siena Heights University, a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in a small town in Michigan. Originally founded by the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 1919 as a college for women, the school became co-educational in 1969, and has since expanded to include satellite campuses throughout the region to provide degrees for working adults.
The residential college provides a liberal arts education with a strong professional focus, primarily to working-class, first-generation, traditional-age college students from the region. Why do I think this? A Proposal. The Primitivist Critique of Civilization--Richard Heinberg. The Primitivist Critique of Civilization Richard Heinberg A paper presented at the 24th annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, June 15, 1995. I. Prologue Having been chosen--whether as devil's advocate or sacrificial lamb, I am not sure--to lead off this discussion on the question, "Was Civilization a Mistake? " From the viewpoint of any non-civilized person, this consideration would appear to be steeped in irony. Nevertheless, despite the possibility that at least some of our remarks may be ironic, disturbing, and pointless, here we are.
The first has to do with certain deeply disturbing trends in the modern world. Now, it can be argued that civilization per se is not at fault, that the problems we face have to do with unique economic and historical circumstances. Many primal peoples tend to view us as pitiful creatures, too--though powerful and dangerous because of our technology and sheer numbers. StumbleUpon WebToolbar - Top 10 lessons I learned as a Peace Corps Volunteer | Personal Growth Development.
TwitterBackgrounds.com | Free Twitter Backgrounds, Custom Twitter Backgrounds. Karen Dalton-Beninato: Tweet Release: Timeline of @LiberateLaura. As exuberance following the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea rules the trending topics on Twitter, I asked Richard Horgan for a statement on his e-activism through @LiberateLaura and the WordPress blog.
He describes a chain of events that truly reached Twitter's sixth degree of separation, and if I knew how to make a Huffington Post jump quote this would be it: "Biz Stone and Evan Williams' brilliantly simple communication tool is without a doubt the most powerful activism tool to ever hit the Internet. " Richard Horgan Here's the timeline, in his own words: "It started innocently enough: I recommended - via Twitter - @LauraLing's NARCO WARS @current report to L.A. -based UK The Independent correspondent @guyadams, as he was preparing to cover the Mexican drug war. Update: @Current TV Co-founders Joel Hyatt and Al Gore have released this welcome home Statement, and Gore welcomed the two journalists and President Bill Clinton home. Obama Sends a Signal to the Few Remaining Suckers Who Believe in the Rule of Law :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dall'Iraq occupato :: news from occupied Iraq :: [ - it - 56629] For anyone still harboring a few scraps of vestigial hope that the change of administration effected by the 2008 election would restore even a thin, weak, straggly lineament thin of the rule of law in the United States, the recent opinion piece by Barack Obama's hand-picked CIA chief, the doleful Establishment water-toter Leon Panetta, will tell you all you need to know.
In the friendly confines of the authoritarian newsletter known as the Washington Post -- Panetta, the weak reed appointed precisely because of his weakness and reedness by Obama, who then surrounded the little puppet with some of the most complicit torture mavens of the Bush Regime to really run the CIA show -- delivered himself of one of the most cringe-worthy performances by a high public official since the ritual abasements of Stalin's 1930s show trials. In the piece, Panetta followed the Dick Cheney party line that the Obama Administration has adopted whole cloth. Look, it's very simple. The Rude Pundit. Time to Join the Fight Against the Right-Wing Townhall Uprisings?
:Is this really the way you guys wanna play this? Is this the way it's gonna go down? You're sending to townhall meetings of members of Congress a bunch of frightened people with misdirected rage, no real understanding of the issues surrounding even their own health care, and little articulation of their point of view other than "Government bad" to shout down officials, the discursive equivalent of howler monkey yawps across the rainforest. And you're doing it with the imprimatur of the Minority Leader. And with the applause of the right-wing media, who, rather than appear at a townhall to lead the charge like in honorable days of old, are like modern generals, staring at their computer screens and smiling at action they foment.
(By the way, a note to Michelle Malkin: the action of loudmouths trying to shut up everyone else ain't a counterinsurgency. Tell you what: the Rude Pundit's gonna put up or shut up. Play Any Video File, Any Time! The Best Media Player! Death threats on Twitter to health care reform advocate. 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics | Best Colleges Online. ShortText.com - Post information. Share it. American Leftist.
What The Trend? Find out WHY terms are trending on Twitter. Are We Winning the Battle on the Web? Or Are We Just Letting Off eSteam? Sobees - your social desktop aggregator. Post Your Sightings | Sightings. Just Go Stand Over There Somewhere... Mindless Prattle - Stepping in it. Virtualista - You'll check out what I tell you to and you'll like it. Making Friends & Influencing People.