A Dharma Bum

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:49:21 -0400

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:48:11 -0400

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:47:54 -0400

bbook: We could ignore it, we could just make movies about...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:43:21 -0400

We could ignore it, we could just make movies about butterflies and cupcakes, but what does that have to do with our actual experience in our culture? These are brutal times we’re living in right now. Ideally, you can make films that are both entertaining and also thought-provoking and maybe even a little painful at times, because I think that’s what we’re dealing with in the world.

MICHAEL SHANNON

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:42:03 -0400

justabouteme: Brazil protests catch authorities on the back foot...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:27:46 -0400

justabouteme:

Brazil protests catch authorities on the back foot | World news | The Guardian no We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/65194198/via/Brazilian

Video

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:33:25 -0400

thepeoplesrecord: ACLU sues NYPD over unconstitutional Muslim...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:28:33 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

ACLU sues NYPD over unconstitutional Muslim surveillance program

June 18, 2013

The ACLU, together with the NYCLU and CUNY’s CLEAR Project, filed a lawsuit today challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional policy and practice of targeting entire Muslim communities for discriminatory and suspicionless surveillance. The NYPD’s vast religious profiling program has cast an unjustified badge of suspicion and stigma on hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers, based on nothing more than their religious faith and practice. We represent civic and religious leaders, two mosques, and a charitable organization, all of whom were swept up in the police department’s dragnet surveillance because they are Muslim.

As documented extensively in the NYPD’s own records and in Pulitzer prize-winning reporting by the Associated Press, NYPD officers and informants have routinely monitored mosques and businesses frequented by Muslims, including restaurants and bookstores. The department has also sent paid infiltrators into mosques, Muslim student associations, and beyond to take photos, write down license plate numbers, and keep notes on people simply because they are Muslim. Video surveillance cameras have been mounted outside mosques, recording every person who goes to worship. Maps created and maintained by the NYPD show the location of scores of mosques and Muslim businesses across New York’s five boroughs. A senior NYPD representative has admitted that these mapping activities have not generated a single lead or resulted in even one terrorism investigation.

The NYPD’s discriminatory surveillance is based on a false and unconstitutional premise: that Muslim religious belief and practices are a basis for law enforcement scrutiny. That is a premise rooted in bias and ignorance, not good law enforcement or fact. It is a premise that is both demonstrably wrong—terrorism is not a Muslim phenomenon—and deeply unfair to the millions of American Muslims who are a law-abiding, diverse, and integral part of our nation and New York City. The NYPD’s surveillance program would be unthinkable if it targeted churches or synagogues, Christian reading rooms or Jewish community centers. The fact that it maps and sends informants into mosques and Muslim-owned businesses is no different. Like all Americans, our Muslim communities are entitled to protection from discriminatory religious profiling and intrusive police surveillance.

The NYPD’s religious profiling has profoundly harmed New York’s Muslim community. Long before the AP confirmed the vast scope of this program, knowledge and fear of unjustified surveillance permeated the community. Our client’s stories how deep the damage has been. The NYPD’s monitoring of mosques has forced religious leaders to censor what they say to their congregants, for fear that their statements could be taken out of context by police officers or informants, resulting in further unjustified scrutiny, or worse. Some religious leaders have felt the need to regularly record their sermons to defend themselves against potential mischaracterizations. Disruptions resulting from NYPD surveillance have also diverted precious time and resources away from religious education and counseling, both of which are part of mosques’ core religious mission. And fear of NYPD surveillance has diminished congregants’ attendance at mosques, prompted distrust of newcomers out of concern that they are NYPD informants, and prevented the mosques from fulfilling their mission of serving as religious sanctuaries.

The same fear of NYPD surveillance has also diminished the ability of charities—like one of our clients, Muslims Giving Back—to raise funds to support their efforts. Muslims Giving Back and one of its leaders, our client Asad Dandia, discovered in October 2012 that the group had been infiltrated for months by a paid NYPD informant posing as a friend and enthusiastic participant in the organization’s religious mission. Since then, mosques have been reluctant to host or support Muslims Giving Back, for fear of other NYPD informants. This type of chronic mistrust cripples the ability of organizations like Muslims Giving Back to solicit the donations from congregants that sustain their charitable activities. Baseless law enforcement scrutiny has interfered with Muslims Giving Back and Asad’s mission of promoting and providing charity to needy New Yorkers in accordance with one of Islam’s primary tenets.

"The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:52:16 -0400

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

- Oscar Wilde

"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:47:44 -0400

“Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.”

- Noam Chomsky

U.S. Suffers Biggest Pay Drop On Record, As Workers Squeezed Tighter

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:43:51 -0400

U.S. Suffers Biggest Pay Drop On Record, As Workers Squeezed Tighter:

The economic “recovery” just keeps getting worse for the average worker: U.S. employers squeezed their employees even harder than usual in the first quarter, leading to the biggest drop in hourly pay on record. Hourly pay for nonfarm workers fell at a 3.8 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday.

… Hourly pay has grown by just 2 percent per year, on average, for the past four years, the weakest four-year stretch on record. At the same time, corporate profits are at record highs, and until a recent swoon, the stock market was setting records, too. Workers haven’t been reaping the rewards, but their employers have been.

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:40:54 -0400

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:39:48 -0400

"Accept- then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:26:04 -0400

“Accept- then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”

- Eckhart Tolle

NY Senate Passes Bill That Makes “Annoying” Police A Felony The...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:31:24 -0400

NY Senate Passes Bill That Makes “Annoying” Police A Felony

The New York State Senate passed a controversial bill on Wednesday that aims to classify ‘aggravated harassment of a police officer’ as a crime, but will it give the authorities the green light for strong-arm tactics if passed?

Sponsored by Senator Joe Griffo, Bill S.2402 would make it a felony to “harass, annoy, or threaten a police officer while on duty.”

“Our system of laws is established to protect the foundations of our society,” Senator Griffo said. “Police officers who risk their lives every day in our cities and on our highways deserve every possible protection, and those who treat them with disrespect, harass them and create situations that can lead to injuries deserve to pay a price for their actions.”

Griffo said that New York police require extra safeguards because “too many people in our society have lost the respect they need to have for a police officer…. We need to make it very clear that when a police officer is performing his duty, every citizen needs to comply and that refusal to comply carries a penalty.”

The bill, which will now move to the State Assembly, would make it a crime for a person to make any type of physical action aimed at intimidating a police officer. Harassment of a police officer would be recognized as a Class E Felony, punishable by up to four years in prison.

"I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:30:38 -0400

“I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.”

- “To the Harbormaster”, Frank O’Hara

reportagebygettyimages: “Our cameras are our weapons. They...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:04:41 -0400

reportagebygettyimages:

“Our cameras are our weapons. They are the reason the revolution will succeed.’

New documentary film The Square centers on Cairo’s Tahrir Square and follows the ‘thorny path to democracy [that] only began with Hosni Mubarak’s fall.’ It also just won the Tim Hetherington Award at the Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:01:17 -0400

cetaceaninspiration: In the early 1990’s, the US Navy...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:29:32 -0400

cetaceaninspiration:

In the early 1990’s, the US Navy declassified their marine mammal program. The practice of using marine mammals to detect mines or kill enemy soldiers is very controversial. The US Navy currently has 79 dolphins, 33 of them wild caught. More than 179 dolphins have died in the program.

These dolphins often live in small pens and are fitted with muzzles to prevent them from eating while on the job. This assures that they will not escape, but will return to their handlers for food. The US Navy is also coming under fire due to its sonar testing which is potentially fatal to wild cetaceans.

Since 2005, SeaWorld Parks and the US Navy have taken part in 10 transfers of animals. The most recent one was in Feb, 2011 when SeaWorld California sent Sparky, a bottlenose dolphin, to the Navy’s small holding pools for military training.

Edward Snowden live Q&A: NSA whistleblower answers your questions

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:27:23 -0400

Gabrielaweb

Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Snowden:

Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.