After over 50 years, the Dodgers have finally returned to New York, and it’s about time.
And it’s wham, bam, slam through the loopholes.
We always win, what a game!
We’re the one, yes, the one percent,
And we have no shame!
Source #OccupyToronto
Author Archives: Paul Ciano
Shame
Vision
Several weeks ago, as part of their IPO filing, Mark Zuckerberg released a letter to Facebook’s shareholders elucidating his vision for the company’s role in shaping the world. What follows is an excerpt:
By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date.
We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring. We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.
A more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services, because as people share their opinions, it makes it easier to improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.
By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.
Take a moment to let this sink in. When the digerati go to sleep at night, this is what they dream about, this is where their minds wander. The line between the virtual world and the real world is blurring. Now, they are inextricably linked in a reciprocal relationship of influence.
Initially, the physical shaped the virtual, but now, the converse is occuring. Technology is providing a viable alternative to how global society has been classically organized, and the gatekeepers of the traditional power structures are starting to recognize the threat to the status quo.
Peer-To-Peer, Openness, Transparency, Disruption
Know these words, for they will continually reappear in substantive debates to come. They belong to the lexicon of those that shape the future. They belong to the New World.
Source GigaOM
Image via VentureBeat
The Real World
The only people in this country, at the moment, who believe, either in Christianity or in the country, are the most despised minority in it. … It is ironical … the people who were slaves here, the most beaten and despised people here … should be, at this moment … the only hope this country has. It doesn’t have any other. None of the descendants of Europe seem to be able to do, or have taken it on themselves to do, what Negros are now trying to do. And this is not a chauvinistic or racial outlook. It probably has something to do with the nature of life itself. It forces you, in any extremity, any extreme, to discover what you really live by, whereas most Americans have been for so long, so safe and so sleepy, that they don’t any longer have any real sense of what they live by. I think they really think it may be Coca-Cola.
- James Baldwin (from an interview after the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama)
In an interview with James Cone, the author of The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Chris Hedges explores the nature of the relationship between Christianity and race, and the paradox of how symbols can be used simultaneously for repression and resistance.
Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, writes on behalf of all those whom the Salvadoran theologian and martyr Ignacio Ellacuría called “the crucified people of history.” He writes for the forgotten and abused, the marginalized and the despised. He writes for those who are penniless, jobless, landless and without political or social power. He writes for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who are transgender. He writes for undocumented farmworkers toiling in misery in the nation’s agricultural fields. He writes for Muslims who live under the terror of war and empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he writes for us. He understands that until white Americans can see the cross and the lynching tree together, “until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black-body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”
“I like people who talk about the real, concrete world,” he said. “And unless I can feel it in my gut, in my being, I can’t say it. The poor help me to say it. The literary people help me to say it—Baldwin is my favorite. Martin King is the next. Malcolm is the third element of my trinity. The poets give me energy. Theologians talk about things removed, way out there. They talk to each other. They give each other degrees. The real world is not there. So that is why I turn to the poets. They talk to the people.
“Being Christian is like being black,” Cone said. “It’s a paradox. You grow up. You wonder why they treat you like that. And yet, at the same time, my mother and daddy told me, ‘don’t hate like they hate. If you do, you will self-destruct. Hate only kills the hater, not the hated.’ It was their faith that gave them the resources to transcend the brutality and see the real beauty. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery how African-Americans, after two and a half centuries of slavery, another century of lynching and Jim Crow segregation, still come out loving white people. Now, most white people don’t think I love them, but I do. They always feel strange when I say that. You see, the deeper the love, the more the passion, especially when the one you love hurt you. You’re brothers and sisters, and yet, they treat you like the enemy. The paradox is, that in spite of all that, African-Americans are the only people who’ve never organized to take down this nation. We have fought. We have given our lives. No matter what they do to us, we still come out whole. Still searching for meaning. I think the resources for that are in the culture and in the religion that is associated with that. That faith and that culture, it was the blues of the spiritual; that faith and that culture gives African-Americans a sense that they are not what white people say they are.”
“It’s like love,” he said. “It’s something you cannot articulate. It’s self-evident in its own living. And I’ve seen it among many black Christians who struggle, particularly in the civil rights movement. They know they’re going to die. They know they’re not going to win in the obvious way of winning. But they have to do what they have to do because the reality that they encounter in that spiritual moment, that reality, is more powerful than the opposition, than that which contradicts it. People respond to what empowers them inside. It makes them know they are somebody when the world treats them as nobody. When you can do that, when you can act out of that spirit, then you know there is a reality that is much bigger than you. And that’s, that’s what black religion bears witness to in all of its flaws. It bears witness to a reality that empowers people to do that which seems impossible.
Some things are too horrible to forget. This month, please take a moment to contemplate the price that has been paid in the struggle for freedom and equality.
Lost Causes
Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won’t just see scenery, you’ll see the whole parade of what Man’s carved out for himself after centuries of fighting, fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed.
That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And if that’s what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we’d better get those boys’ camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it’s not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here, you just have to see them again.
And from the poster of the video, jbranstetter04:
Honesty, sincerity, selflessness, duty, integrity, political courage, these are the things missing in Washington. And until they return, we will continue to see our great Republic slip away from us, until eventually it is no better than a third-rate, banana republic run by tin-horn, despot dictators who exploit the people for personal gain.
Do we still have politicians like the one portrayed in this movie? Ones who will put their political careers on the line for something that they believe in? Or, are we just left with spineless, greedy people who are only concerned with their own political futures?
I don’t have much faith left in our politicians to do the right thing for our country no matter the consequence to their own future. But I do think that there are good people out there who would love to go to Washington and do what is right for our country. The problem is that they are not running for office. The likely reason for this is because they don’t want to get into the cesspool that we call Washington politics.
Source YouTube
Image via Occupy Congress
Misunderstood
I am far from an expert on military matters, but this seems like cogent advice.
Even before they put on a uniform, the members of the post-9/11 generation of service members were the best educated, most tech-savvy ever to sign up. And by the time they leave active duty, they’ve added to their knowledge base with still more technical and leadership skills.
So why, in a country where business is always fighting for competitive advantage, is overall unemployment among veterans greater than 12 percent – some 3 percentage points higher than their civilian peers?
According to Tarantino and others who spoke with Military.com, there’s no single reason unemployment among veterans is higher than civilians. Instead, there are several contributing factors: Employers and veterans who fail to see how they can connect; shrinking public sector budgets; and a long-suspected but difficult-to-prove reluctance by some employers to hire workers who may still have a reserve commitment.
Tarantino said he thinks the communication problem comes in part from a lack of civilian understanding.
“We’re 30 or 35 years into the all-volunteer force,” he said. “There are very few business leaders who served … We now live in a country where so few people understand military service.”
At one time, Tarantino said, there was a very good chance that a veteran going in for a job interview would be talking with someone who also was a veteran. There was no need to have to translate what a Soldier might have done and learned in the military because the person on the other side of the desk had been there and done that, Tarantino said.
Other vets’ advocates agreed.
In parts of the country without significant populations of veterans, hiring managers often just don’t understand what skills a veteran possesses, he said. One of the Chamber’s goals is to help employers get that understanding, through efforts with the Labor Department and the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.
But veterans have to do their part in selling themselves, too, Schmiegal said. And they need to do it without military jargon, acronyms, and references to skills designations.
“They need to speak more about their leadership experience, they need to talk about their leadership skills, their problem-solving skills, their adaptability, and the fact that they’re good team players,” he said. “That will distinguish them from a lot of their peers” who did not serve.
Source Military.com
Image via Political Rapids
The Great American Firewall
Ostensibly tongue-in-cheek, the latest Downfall mashup conveys much of the truth and rage that characterizes the sane response to our absurd reality. They may win a few battles, but they will lose the war. There is no going back.
If you’d like to learn more about SOPA/Protect IP, please refer to the video and links at the bottom of the post.
How could this even be up for a vote!? Why isn’t this on every front page of a newspaper!?
First, the U.S. Supreme Court says corporations are people. Now, corporations can censor people…
It’s been almost two decades. The MPAA/RIAA still haven’t figured out the Internet. Piracy is a service problem. The way to defeat piracy is to provide a better service than the pirates, not take a shit on the First Amendment!
You don’t get to destroy the Internet because it doesn’t fit your business model!
The economy is in the toilet… Congress wants to cripple the only medium that’s consistently creating jobs and growth. It all comes down to money. You need a thousand people pissed off just to balance out one dollar that a politician raises.
How are a bunch of old people, most of whom don’t even use the Internet, regulating it!?
I don’t see congressman going to jail for voting on something they haven’t read, for accepting money to let companies dictate legislation!
Don’t cry, Disney owns the rights to that emotion.
Imagine this happened 15 years ago. There’d be no Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. No memes… The Internet is lost.
It was supposed to be a vast network of infinite human knowledge, expression, and creativity. Now, it’s censored to catch pirates, who will get around it anyway.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Further Reading
What is SOPA and how does it work? The Stop Online Piracy Act explained
The Stop Online Piracy Act: Big Content’s full-on assault against the Safe Harbor
How SOPA would affect you: FAQ
A Master’s Labor
You think this can last. There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, cause when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.
It is a great pleasure to bear witness to the fruits of a master’s labor, and a great compliment when an individual is found to reflect the essence of their place and time. Undoubtedly, Mr. Nolan is both of these things, i.e., an incredibly skilled filmmaker and a person that has an uncanny ability to identify the zeitgeist of our age, explore the depths of its consequences, and seamlessly weave dark, provocative stories that both entertain and provoke contemplation.
I can feel the timeless qualities of another masterpiece. It does not seem like he is going to disappoint.
Source YouTube
The Other Side
They dream of a world where they can make us better. They won’t let things like morals and ethics stand in the way of their inexorable pursuit of knowledge and control. Their ever more mechanical view of human beings will make it difficult to see that we are more than the sum of our parts.
In a world where perception often seems to hold more weight than reality, I implore you to not let them define you. Don’t let them set boundaries for your potential. Don’t let them take away your dignity, your spirit, your dreams. Don’t let them extinguish your fire.
Source YouTube
Scars
I hope these men and women realize that they are so much more than soldiers.
This little guy was used for fighting. He was a toy for other dogs to beat up on and they don’t have a choice. What a better companion to have than a veteran, like us, or a firefighter or a police officer to help this little guy out. He has the physical scars on the outside, but we have the mental scars on the inside. So, that’s where we heal each other and meet in the middle of the road.
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