Tag: revolution

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

In the hopes that someone here has kids or grand-kids, those rugrats either know about what i’m going to let you in on or it hasn’t hit their school/campus yet to the point they can’t socially exist without it.

Twitter will be a thing of the past soon as a new twitter-esque social network/microblogging service has emerged to a more mainstream prominence lately.

It’s called Tumblr

It’s been around for a couple of years but 2009 is when it started coming into it’s own.  Check it out and play around with it.

I made mine and it’s in the blogroll as “American Pirate”.  It’s a more personal touch if you actually give a shit about what shennanigans i’m getting into next.  I say that only because today is a day of “student activities” in NYC being run by SDS (tee hee!) so stay tuned….

But, mark my words, 2010 is gonna be a big year for Tumblr.  

Think Iran’s Twitter Revolt was impressive?  Imagine if they had unlimited characters to text, ability to post photos and video on the fly, and even “geotag” where it was happening for those keeping an eye on developments…..or, I dunno, Human Rights groups needing evidence to collect about abuses….ahhh technology 🙂

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Yes, revolution, but as the title states, it’s not what you may think. In this case, I say Revolution as in drastic change, and when I say change I mean the kind of change you can believe in.

    On to the show. So you say you want a Revolution? How about a solar energy revolution?

     Thomas Edison, one of history’s greatest inventors said; “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” He was right then, in 1931, and he remains right today. The American people agree. Today, 92 percent of all Americans want our country to develop solar energy resources, and 77 percent believe the federal government should make solar power development a national priority.

– snip

     It also would mean the creation of over a million new jobs.

Sen Bernie Sanders: It’s time for a solar revolution

Bold text added by the diarist

Much more below the fold

What to do when the government shoots at you?

by Diana Sweet, RawStory, January 02, 2010

An amateur video apparently taken with a cell phone has surfaced on YouTube that appears to contradict the Iranian government’s claim that its security forces didn’t shoot at protesters last Sunday during demonstrations that left at least eight people dead, including the nephew of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

As first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, the video not only shows a gunman opening fire on demonstrators – it also gives an eye-opening look at a growing air of defiance by Iranian opposition.

A man in plain clothes is seen and heard opening fire on the crowd as another man can be heard shouting out “Dishonorable Basiji!” blaming a member of Iran’s Basij militia for firing the shots.

With shots fired, you would expect the demonstrators to flee and seek cover, but instead, they decide to fight back.

“Attack!” someone in the crowd calls out, and the crowd runs off in pursuit of the gunman as the video, less than a minute in length comes to an end.

I’m sure most of you have seen this. It’s a billboard sponsored by an as-yet unnamed businessman in Missouri. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the others highlighted in this diary at Orange too.

I find it incredibly offensive, but only because it’s coming from the WingNut faction. I figure if the government targeted in these public advertisements actually cared to enforce the law against sedition then they’ll do so before tomorrow morning. If not then it’s open season and somebody up there approves. I mean, it’s not like the feds don’t know who paid for it, whose company billboard it’s sitting on, and even who designed and printed it out and pasted it up. That’s what all this post 9-11 spying on Americans is all about, isn’t it? And the WingNuts love them some NSA spies rooting around in their email, business dealings, bank accounts and cell phone conversations. Or, they did when Shrubbie was POTUS, since he started it.

Which brings me to what is offensive here. It’s coming from those who served as tireless cheerleaders for wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the blanket abrogation of Constitutional and human rights here at home, for war crimes, the rendition and torture of prisoners of war in blatant violation of Geneva, for limitless government spying on innocent citizens and, finally, for the unaccountable billions and/or trillions printed to bail out Wall Street, the banking sector and even the Fed itself when the IMF began its long overdue audit of America’s books on The Day The Economy Fell. All the while unconcerned about trillions in deficit spending to support not just those illegal wars and the largest expansion of Big Brother in our history, championing Greed Gone Wild that brought this nation and the rest of the world to its knees.

The Anti-War Movement: Hippies had it Right.

God, how I miss OPOL.

“But you know, if you wanna end war and stuff, you have to sing loud,” said Arlo. And end a war they did. It was not only by song, not only by protest, it was by the barrage of the REALITY of the horrors of war that woke the American People up to Vietnam.

It was the IMAGES.

I think that the American public doesn’t want to look at the horrors anymore. It would make it too hard to exist. Too hard to breathe easy over their lattes, doing nothing about it. They are too worried about keeping their jobs to think about much else.

You see, if they saw CURRENT images, such as this, in Obama’s Bagram, done by the US military, they would have to admit we are the barbarians we are supposed to stand against. We are the monsters.

Revulsion begets Revolution.

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem.

Disclaimer: Some of these particular images below have had their validity questioned and lacking citation, the author of this essay wishes you to consider them to be used in this instance as “examples” of rape behavior by soldiers. ~ Diane

 

Dude, now like the cat is out of the bag and like we know everyone but ‘conservatives’ and old people just want to have fun, I think you’ll see more top-of-the-line revolutionaries come out of the closet of stonerdom and, you know, not be afraid to have our revolutionary fervor tempered by a joint or two on the way to the big protest march or strategic infrastructure demolition.

So, I’ve seen some comments here and elsewhere (DKos) that mock the people calling out and protesting against the crooked GOP agenda of Lindsey Graham (and the Elitist pro-Establishment interests that he represents).

But you all should be rooting for the protesters here, and not accepting the U.S. Media line that the status-quo GOP agenda is somehow to be perceived as less “extreme”.

For it is the well heeled LindseyGraham-GeorgeBush-RushLimbaugh Republicans who are the fascists, the Human Torture enthusiasts, the buddies of the Wall Street crooks, the racists, and the War Mongering World Empire murderers — not the people shouting out in protest at Lindsey Graham.

The protesters of Lindsey Graham, who Graham himself decries for calling Bush a “War Criminal” (which of course he is), are largely Libertarians and old-school Constitutional Republicans that disapprove of the GOP War and Wall Street agenda.

Watch:

 

I never really “chose” to be on the left side of the political spectrum. I just ended up there because the traditional left was more logical than right and center if you come at life from the point-of-view implied in the founding documents of the American Republic (alas, now past). In America the left is really fulfilling the role of conserving the ideas and ideals of the American Revolution. Generally we believe in the rule of law rather than the law of privilege. But most importantly we believe in using principles established during the enlightenment that reason and science should be appealed to in setting public policy. Religion does not work as a foundation for public policy because people differ in religious principles. We, in the West, did not invent reason but we were the first to realize that appeal to reason was the only way to wars like the Thirty-Years War which devasted much of parts of Europe (mainly Germany) much as Afghanistan is devasted now.  

Original article, by Ted Sprague and subtitled Millions of Iranians have come out on the streets demanding a change in regime. The movement that was first sparked off by “electoral fraud” has become a movement to demand complete democratic rights and against the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is an interview (conducted on July 2nd 2009) with Arash Azizi, an Iranian socialist, which was originally made to explain the situation in Iran to an Indonesian audience, via In Defence of Marxism:

Ted Sprague: Can you explain to our readers about the electoral fraud in Iran and the movement that has emerged out of it?