(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

It’s because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight.

I need your input because I think this is on a larger scale then I thought.  If what I described in this diary has happened to anyone else with a Bank of America account (or any account where activity has been “irregular” lately) please tell me in the comment threads or via email if you’re concerned about privacy.  Use

Guerrilla Mail for a fake account to contact me if you’re that paranoid.

Three (3) is the number of overdraft charges people have told me they have incurred even though…well…they shouldn’t have.

The sampling (my “n” I suppose) was somewhat random as well as close friends.  My friends vary in their fiscal responsibility but when even the Republican ones are complaining about it I know that this is a pattern that suggests it is deliberate by Bank of America.

The people I didn’t know were classmates that I overheard talking about BOA charging three (3) overdrafts even though they had hundreds of dollars just a few hours before they made another purchase.  The same response was given when their friends asked “did you call to see what happened?” to which the response (response my friends gave too) was “they told me I needed to take into account the charges I had pending that weren’t shown on my statement”.  Yes, charges are pending, but we ain’t telling you which ones and if you look at the fine print, BOA is allowed to place a hold on charges until they feel it is necessary to release it.

Same excuse they gave when I asked them why it would take 11 days to process a check I put in.

What are the chances that 5 people that know each other (but the bank doesn’t know they know each other) experienced the same problem, with the same frequency, and the same exact situation?

What is the possibility that a random conversation one butts in on to tell others it happened to them and their friends is experiencing the same thing, from the same bank, around the same time as everyone else?

What is the probability of this being random?

Does it show a pattern indicative of a systematic function or a random fluke of continuing coincidence?

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

I can’t tell you how many times a conservative professor has thrown me and other students a statistic and used it as a jumping point to push his views on others citing the statistic he handed out.

They’re facts, it has a chart in it, the numbers show i’m right.

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

Protesters smashed store windows and threw rocks and firebombs at riot police who responded with teargas today, the second day of violence during commemorations for a teenager shot dead by police a year ago.

The killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos led to two weeks of rioting in Greece last year, with gangs of youths smashing, looting and burning shops across the country in protest at heavy-handed police tactics.

Today’s clashes broke out during a demonstration by about 3,000 people, mostly secondary school pupils, through the centre of Athens. Several dozen youths towards the back of the march attacked riot police with rocks, firebombs and firecrackers, smashing some of the bus stops, telephone booths and shopfronts not damaged in yesterday’s demonstration.

Protesters injured a passerby who attempted to intervene, beating him unconscious. Police detained at least three youths. Demonstrators scrawled anti-police graffiti and stencilled a photograph of Grigoropoulos on shop windows and walls along the demonstration route.

Minor clashes broke out during a march of about 2,000 people in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, where police fired teargas to disperse youths pelting them with rocks.

Police said at least 16 officers and five demonstrators were injured yesterday, while 177 people were detained in Athens and another 103 in Thessaloniki. One policeman who lost control of his motorbike struck and injured a female pedestrian, who was tended to by demonstrators until an ambulance arrived.

At Athens University, masked protesters broke into the building, injuring the university’s dean and pulling down a Greek flag, replacing it with a black and red anarchist banner. The clashes continued late into the night, and police clashed with protesters in the southern city of Patras and the north-western city of Ioannina.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

Hofstra University, which has fielded a football team for the past 69 years, is dropping the sport.

The school said it cut the program because of costs and fading interest and will use the $4.5 million spent annually on the team on scholarships and other priorities.

The board of trustees voted unanimously Wednesday night to shut the program, which had been in existence since the Long Island school’s founding in 1937. The coaching staff was told Thursday morning, sources told ESPN.com.

Hofstra, which has competed in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) since 1991, is the second member of the Colonial Athletic Association to drop its football program in the past 10 days. Northeastern University, in Boston, announced Nov. 23 it was dropping its program after 74 seasons.

“The cost of the football program, now and in the future, far exceeds the return possible,” Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz said Thursday. He added that despite Hofstra having sent several players to the NFL, the program does not attract enough national attention.

“Given that, along with the low level of interest, financial support and attendance among our students, our alumni and the community, the choice was painful, but clear.”

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, who played at Hofstra from 1994-97, called the move a “sad state of affairs.”

“It was weird because it kind of happened out of nowhere,” he said.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/…

No, sadly, it didn’t just “happen out of nowhere” and we’re all holding our fucking breaths that the money is gonna be used on academics.  In fact, why do we need more money for academics?  What the fuck are you spending our tuition on?!?!

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

So it’s come to this. Obama’s gotta wage his war, and I gotta sit in the street.

It’s not that I like blocking traffic or getting arrested or dealing with the fall-out when I could be reading a book. It’s that I can’t live with endless war and I must end it or surely die.

I’m not leaving this country. This is my mess, so help me, and I’ll scrub it till my fingers bleed. I will not compromise with genocide. I will not run from those behind it.

Endless war is the promise of our time, signed in blood and sealed with death’s own kiss. Its stench hangs around us heavy smog. While I dare not breath for fear of intoxication, I cannot hold much longer.

This is the American nightmare, and it’s shattering my heart like glass.

As I stepped to the microphone outside West Point Military Academy Tuesday, all I wanted was to go home, honestly. Good lord, don’t let me cry in front of these people, I thought. Why must I play out this misery for all to see?

Obama’s only doing exactly what he said he’d do, but still, I’m heartbroken. I can’t go on like this.

I’ve been a mess. When I try to imagine the future of this country, I see nothing. I have no faith that good always triumphs anymore. I think where there’s a will to change there’s a way to subvert it. I taste the world I am to inherit, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

But as I admitted to the crowd my feelings of hopelessness and despondency, I realized once again, that I am not alone. People stared into my eyes with equally heavy brows and clenching teeth. When they came close, I saw tears in their eyes as well, and they seemed thankful to see them in mine.

Our suffering is one. We are the disenfranchised. In our lives, our jobs, our politics; we have been denigrated to utter impotence. People are not meant to live this way, and we cry out in one voice through history for liberation. Again and again, we’ve had our voices ignored and our mutual bonds dissolved by paranoia and fury.

But I couldn’t let him get away with it. They think his slick speeches and skin color will keep the left at home. Someone had to go down for this, even if it was me.

We marched to the installation gate where a line of cops and troops were waiting. When we sat down in front of the barricades, they didn’t seem all that concerned. Young and old alike joined us on the pavement. I was left awestruck by the singular dedication of the burgeoning crowd to ending our Global War of Lies and Terror.

For 30 minutes, the hundreds of us shouted down the full winter moon. We chanted our opposition to escalation. We lamented the change we were promised and denied. The message was loud and in no unmistakable terms: Obama, this is the death of your presidency!

When we moved into the traffic lane after he started his speech, I felt a great warmth from within for the first time in weeks. While through my head streamed images of Satyagrahas past, my heart pounded reassurance, for it knew I was there for a reason.

This government refuses to respond to the needs and demands of its people. It’s come to this. I refuse to be ignored. I pledge to be peacefully ungovernable.

The police carried my crutches while I limped to the car in hand-cuffs. A sense of satisfaction settled in as I waited in the back and counted those who’d be joining me ‘downtown.’ Six of us in total. We’d done it. At least to us, Obama had not gotten away with it.

Not an hour later, we were released. The officers who I dealt with were beyond respectful to us and our cause. While I didn’t make any friends, I didn’t find any enemies. At some point during the evening, I cut my finger on the pavement, but beyond that, we walked away with little more than disorderly conduct charges and a notice to appear Dec. 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Town Court at 254 Main St. Highland Falls, NY 10928. (Come join us!)

As we left the station, I was thrilled to see a sidewalk full of activists waiting and to find a prominent lawyer in town already representing us. While Obama had shattered our dreams of peace, we felt we’d won the day. Even with the impending escalation, we found the strength to joyously declare the birth of a new peace movement!

The government won this round. 30,000 more troops is a clear loss for us and more importantly the people of Afghanistan. But from what I saw, we are ready to rededicate ourselves to unwavering resistence from within. In the words of our former dictator, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…see, you can’t get fooled again.”

Obama is a war president and we are a peace movement. As long as we’re moving, Obama, and you refuse to be governed, we’ll refuse to be governed. Your racist wars will end and this world will know peace in our lifetimes. Until that day, rest assured that WE WILL BE YOUR INSURGENCY!

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

NEW YORK- As speculation grew of a split between members of the Pirate Party of The United States, sources have told us that one of the leaders who caused the split finished talks with members and that they planned to steal the Party away from the current President.

Captain Kidd, who disagreed with many of the policies and handlings of party affairs, plans to take the Pirate Party under his command and many insiders have confirmed that he has more then enough support to go through with it.  No official statement has been given as to what exact plans either side has at the moment, but the current President could not be reached for comment.  Captain Kidd has the support of Pirate Party heads from Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Norway, and France, while the current President has “support” although he will not name what support he has.

When we asked Captain Kidd when he planned to make his move to take the party under his command he said “2 months”. He refused to give any more information as to the details of his plans, but responded to questions as to why he wished to steal the party away from the current President by pointing to himself and saying “Pirate”.