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And, yes, I DO take it personally: 12/18/2011 - 12/25/2011
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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Friday, December 23, 2011

Was the CIA involved in the shutdown of Occupy and why was the Freedom of Information Act request denied?

from rt...


The Occupy Wall Street movement has experienced severe crackdowns nationwide. Many of the occupiers suspect the CIA has been aiding local law enforcement to try to thwart the movement. The Partnership for Civil Justice filed a Freedom of Information Act request to try to see if the CIA was involved in the OWS crackdowns, but the PCJF was denied the information. Is the CIA covering up evidence?

both interesting and disturbing...

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Thursday, December 22, 2011

The deep compassion of Occupy

rebecca solnit...

The breadth of this movement is one thing, its depth another. It has rejected not just the particulars of our economic system, but the whole set of moral and emotional assumptions on which it’s based. Take the pair shown in a photograph from Occupy Austin in Texas. The amiable-looking elderly woman is holding a sign whose computer-printed words say, “Money has stolen our vote.” The older man next to her with the baseball cap is holding a sign handwritten on cardboard that states, “We are our brothers’ keeper.”

The photo of the two of them offers just a peek into a single moment in the remarkable period we’re living through and the astonishing movement that’s drawn in… well, if not 99% of us, then a striking enough percentage: everyone from teen pop superstar Miley Cyrus with her Occupy-homage video to Alaska Yup’ik elder Esther Green ice-fishing and holding a sign that says “Yirqa Kuik” in big letters, with the translation -- “occupy the river” -- in little ones below.

The woman with the stolen-votes sign is referring to them. Her companion is talking about us, all of us, and our fundamental principles. His sign comes straight out of Genesis, a denial of what that competitive entrepreneur Cain said to God after foreclosing on his brother Abel’s life. He was not, he claimed, his brother’s keeper; we are not, he insisted, beholden to each other, but separate, isolated, each of us for ourselves.

Think of Cain as the first Social Darwinist and this Occupier in Austin as his opposite, claiming, no, our operating system should be love; we are all connected; we must take care of each other. And this movement, he’s saying, is about what the Argentinian uprising that began a decade ago, on December 19, 2001, called politica afectiva, the politics of affection.

If it’s a movement about love, it’s also about the money they so unjustly took, and continue to take, from us -- and about the fact that, right now, money and love are at war with each other. After all, in the American heartland, people are beginning to be imprisoned for debt, while the Occupy movement is arguing for debt forgiveness, renegotiation, and debt jubilees.


yes, we ARE our brother's keeper...

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

I'm not pushing Ron Paul

but this sure does capture some of my sentiments...

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I'm following the news as usual but, oh, my...! Let's forget it for today, shall we...?

i'm in that place once again, that place of near-despair that i occasionally get to when there just doesn't seem to be any uplifting news whatsoever...

so...

how about some holiday greetings...?


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Photo credit: my daughter

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Monday, December 19, 2011

More tragedy in Cairo

from spiegel...

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Stones thrown during clashes between soldiers and protesters in Cairo are
placed in a heart-shape around blood stains, in memory of protesters killed
during the latest clashes. Thirteen people have been killed in the violence
since Friday with hundreds suffering injuries. Over 100 demonstrators have
been arrested. The most recent clashes come just days after Egyptians voted
in the latest round of parliamentary elections. Protests against ongoing military
rule in the country have been ongoing since mid-November and have become
increasingly violent since then. Forty-two people were killed in street battles
in November. Both United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have expressed concern at the latest flare-up.


so sad...

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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Sunday high desert sunset photoblogging

yeah, i know, it's been a long time since i've done any photoblogging... for one thing, my canon camera developed some "issues" and, even though it was still more or less useable, i took it offline because it wasn't really doing the job... then i got a new sony which is really quite a whizzy camera but i didn't get into using it until just the past few days because it's got so much whiz that i had to take some time to learn how to operate it...

anywayz, here's some high desert sunset photos from this evening...


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the old camera was able to capture some of the subtler colors pretty well and i still have to figure out what settings to use on this camera to do the same...

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What's going on with Twitter...? Are we seeing censorship take hold...?

disturbing...
Welcome To The United Police States of America, Sponsored By Twitter

Imagine my surprise this morning when, without warning, my shiny new Twitter account (@d_seaman) was suspended and taken offline.

No more tweets for you. You now have 0 followers.

My crime? Talking too much about Occupy Wall Street (I'm not an Occupier, but as a blogger and journalist it strikes me as one of the most important stories out there -- hence the constant coverage), and talking too much about the controversial detainment without trial provisions contained in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would basically shred the Bill of Rights and subject American citizens to military police forces. The same level of civil rights protection that enemy combatants in a cave in Afghanistan receive!

But no, my tweets were 'annoying our users,' according to Twitter's suspension notice.

Well, not so much: nearly everyone following me appreciated my coverage of this issue, when few others in the media have had an interest in the NDAA or the widespread Occupy turnouts all over the country last night.

If they didn't appreciate it, ignorant bliss is only an 'unfollow' away. So why was I suspended only for covering two very serious news stories, and offering my own brand of commentary? I wasn't harassing users. I wasn't spamming. I wasn't hawking affiliate or porn links or any of the trash that should get one swiftly suspended from Twitter. (I've received some spam direct messages already; funny that those aren't suspended, but I was.)

I have contacted Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, and several tech journalists hoping to get some answers. I don't want to start a big thing -- I just want my account reactivated. This is America, not Iran, thanks in advance.

Also: it's worth questioning why #NDAA and #OWS, which are receiving consistently VERY high volumes of conversation/tweet traffic are not trending at all on Twitter, yet their featured 'worldwide trends' this morning include: Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, #myfavoritefood, and Kindergarten Cop.


yes, i know, everyone's on edge right now, and rightly so... we don't need to leap to any hysterical conclusions but, at the same time, we would be foolish not to be looking at anything and everything with a very critical eye...

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