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The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Student Debts, Stunted Lives | | AlterNet - 0 views

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    A thought to keep in mind as you read this - what happens to the already overburdened graduate whose job gets outsourced, and then can't find another because he's deemed "overqualified" for the low skilled, low wage jobs available? Answer: Look up "capitalization of interest" and then note that one can't erase student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy. What will result will be the mathematical equivalent of charging compound interest on a loan that the graduate has been deprived of the means of repaying.
Bakari Chavanu

"What Did We Actually Do Right?" On the Unexpected Success and Spread of Occupy Wall St... - 0 views

  • For those who desire to create a society based on the principle of human freedom, direct action is simply the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Seems like some people in the movement turn activism itself into a goal, rather than focusing real change. That's why politicians typically end up getting things done, because they focus on solutions, though those solutions don't always help most people.
  • Actually, the development of consensus process, which is probably the movement’s greatest accomplishment, emerges just as much from the tradition of radical feminism, and draws on spiritual traditions from Native American to Quakerism. This is where the whole exotic language of the movement comes from: facilitation, “the people’s microphone,” spokescouncils, blocks; though in the case of Occupy Wall Street, augmented and transformed by the experience of General Assembly movements across the Mediterranean.
  • But the experience of actually watching a group of a thousand, or two thousand, people making collective decisions without a leadership structure, let alone that of thousands of people in the streets linking arms to holding their ground against a phalanx of armored riot cops, motivated only by principle and solidarity, can change one’s most fundamental assumptions about what politics, or for that matter, human life, could actually be like.
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  • The anti-war movements after 2003 mobilized hundreds of thousands, but they fell back on the old fashioned vertical politics of top-down coalitions, charismatic leaders, and marching around with signs.
Ian Schlom

Big Lie: America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World...We're Ranked 27th! - 0 views

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    Geoffrey sent me this in a message on fb.
thinkahol *

Christine O'Donnell at "Values" Summit: White Conservatives Have Always Ruled... - 0 views

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    Thanks to intrepid twitterers like Sarah Posner and our own Addie Stan, I'm getting a good picture of the utter depravity on display at the "values voters" summit without having to actually listen to it on C-Span. Here are some bits from newly-minted Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's Palin-esque speech.
thinkahol *

How Did an Entire Political Party Decide to Reject Climate Change Science? « ... - 0 views

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    Ron Brownstein notes in a  terrific new National Journal column just how striking it is  to see a major American political party decide, all at once, to reject  climate science in its entirety. (via Jay Rosen)
thinkahol *

American Citizen Detained, Threatened With Deportation « SpeakEasy - 0 views

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    "American Citizen detained and threatened with deportation for being brown"
thinkahol *

The Rich Can Already Call It a Year « SpeakEasy - 0 views

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    Well, 2011, it's been nice. But I think we've worked enough already. In any case, we've already made enough money. Time to call it a year. This is a ridiculous idea, right? Yet, as the Canadian Financial Post reported at the beginning of the week, "Top CEOs will have earned average workers' full annual pay by 2:30 p.m. today." The "today" in question was Monday, January 3, the first business day of the year. Here's their explanation:
thinkahol *

Whither Now American Exceptionalism: On the Attempted Political Assassination... - 0 views

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    Back when Denis Leary was still a stand-up comedian, he had a funny yet sadly true bit about the fact that it's only the good ones that get assassinated. This morning, as I was reading a New York Times article about the sad killing of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer by a religious extremist, I lamented to my wife the bitter irony that it is always the voices of tolerance who are the assassinated by bigots.
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