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"This relates to something I have been saying for a long time - that the conservative movement badly needs a counter reformation, an insurrection by reasonable grownups who are brave enough to push back against the forces of bilious unreason and Culture War that have taken over an entire wing of the "left-right spectrum." Is there any hope that this might happen?"

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish wants the proposed sunshine portal to include the names of state employees along with their titles and salaries. But she hopes the legislation, which would create an online database of state government financial information, is approved regardless of whether it requires that names be included.

Jane McGonigal is one of the most interesting inventors you've never heard of.The bubbly game designer -- whose optimism seems to flow out of her wild blond hair -- is trying to get the world to play a lot more online video games, and not just for the sake of fun.The cooperative skills and hopefulness that people learn while pecking away at online games like World of Warcraft will help our society address real-world problems like climate change and nuclear arms proliferation, she says. To get people to use less oil and mentor entrepreneurs in Africa, she also is developing games that merge the digital and real worlds.

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn't already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer. Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate" describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn't exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the  fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear. Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we "come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are." This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.

From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. "The future has no future" is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks. 

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac

Scott Crow is an Austin-based anarchist community organizer, political activist, and writer. His grassroots organizing projects include the post-Katrina Common Ground Collective in New Orleans, which has been called the largest anarchist-influenced organization in modern U.S. history. Scott has worked with groups like Greenpeace, ACORN, and the Rainforest Action Network, and currently works at an anarchist recycling center cooperative in Austin. Scott's political activities have led the FBI to label him a "domestic terrorist," and earlier this year he was featured in a front page article in The New York Times about FBI surveillance of political activists. Scott's book, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective, will be published by PM Press in September, 2011. Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog (http://theragblog.blogspot.com) and the New Journalism Project. Host and producer: Thorne Dreyer; Engineer and Co-Producer: Tracey Schulz. Video produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix video production. http://zgraphix.org http://austin.indymedia.org

We in the press need to think more highly of our readers, as well as of our own ability to report on stories that don't depend simply on the shock value of violence, or on cheap-shot ridicule, or on stifling formulas. For many Americans, nonviolent direct actions like this occupation are the best hope for having a political voice, and they deserve to be taken seriously as such.

It's hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists; between theorists of revolution and its practitioners. Writers who for years have been publishing essays that sound like position papers for vast social movements that do not in fact exist seem seized with confusion or worse, dismissive contempt, now that real ones are everywhere emerging. It's particularly scandalous in the case of what's still, for no particularly good reason, referred to as the 'anti-globalization' movement, one that has in a mere two or three years managed to transform completely the sense of historical possibilities for millions across the planet. This may be the result of sheer ignorance, or of relying on what might be gleaned from such overtly hostile sources as the New York Times; then again, most of what's written even in progressive outlets seems largely to miss the point-or at least, rarely focuses on what participants in the movement really think is most important about it. As an anthropologist and active participant-particularly in the more radical, direct-action end of the movement-I may be able to clear up some common points of misunderstanding; but the news may not be gratefully received. Much of the hesitation, I suspect, lies in the reluctance of those who have long fancied themselves radicals of some sort to come to terms with the fact that they are really liberals: interested in expanding individual freedoms and pursuing social justice, but not in ways that would seriously challenge the existence of reigning institutions like capital or state. And even many of those who would like to see revolutionary change might not feel entirely happy about having to accept that most of the creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism-a tradition that they have hitherto mostly dismissed-and that taking this movement seriously will necessarily also mean a respectful engagement with it. I am writing