Don't Fear Tahrir

see also: mondolian.tumblr.com

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Fault Lines: History of an occupation

Fault Lines tells the definitive history of Occupy Wall Street from its early days through the movement's rapid spread up to the brutal crackdown by state authorities.

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

What lies behind the unprecedented attack on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights is a growing understanding in the ruling class that the protests that took place around the world against social inequality in 2011 will inevitably re-emerge in more powerful forms in 2012 and beyond, as austerity measures and the crashing economy make the conditions of life more and more impossible for the working class. The virtually unanimous support in Congress for H.R. 347, among Democrats as well as Republicans, reflects overriding sentiment within the ruling establishment for scrapping all existing democratic rights in favor of dictatorial methods of rule.

This sentiment was most directly expressed this week by Wyoming Republican legislator David Miller, who recently introduced a bill into the state legislature that would give the state the power, in an “emergency,” to create its own standing army through conscription, print its own currency, acquire military aircraft, suspend the legislature, and establish martial law. “Things happen quickly sometimes—look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” Miller told the Star-Tribune in Casper, Wyoming. Repeating arguments employed by every military dictatorship over the past century, Miller declared, “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.” Miller’s so-called “doomsday law” was defeated in the Wyoming legislature Tuesday by the narrow margin of 30-27.

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Great profile

[socialismartnature]

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Journalist Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Wikipedia, Reddit to Shut Down Sites Wednesday to Protest Proposed Stop Online Piracy Act

Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

"Internet Censorship Affects Everybody": Rebecca MacKinnon on the Global Struggle for Online Freedom

[asymphonyofwords]

God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a Spiritual War. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television. To believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. BUT WE WON'T. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

[fightforthe28th-blog]

[thetruthovercomfort-blog-blog]

[thepeoplesrecord]

Ideal grandparents.

[mahkellll-blog-blog]

The cost of sanity, in this society, is a certain level of alienation.

Terence McKenna (via lucifelle)

[decolonizeyourmind-deactivated2]

cool

[thcrstlshp]

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

banksystreetart

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Say hello to Mr. 1%

[ghostsofrobespierre]

  The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression. What is more, one hopes that participants in nonviolent resistance will themselves become human beings of a more admirable sort. No one can fail to be impressed by the personal qualities of those who have grown to maturity in the civil rights movement. Whatever else it may have accomplished, the civil rights movement has made an inestimable contribution to American society in transforming the lives and characters of those who took part in it. Perhaps a program of principled, nonviolent resistance can do the same for many others, in the particular circumstances that we face today. It is not impossible that this may save the country from a terrible future, from yet another generation of men who think it clever to discuss the bombing of North Vietnam as a question of tactics and cost-effectiveness.

— Noam Chomsky, 1967, The New York Review of Books

[dontfeartahrir-blog]

Chile rising

Fault Lines follows Chile's student protest movement and examines the underlying issues driving the anger.

Chilean students have taken over schools and city streets in the largest protests the country has seen in decades.

The students are demanding free education, and an end to the privatization of their schools and universities. The free-market based approach to education was implemented by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet in his last days in power.

The protests are causing a political crisis for Sebastian Pinera, the country's president. But what are the underlying issues driving the anger?

As the demonstrations in Chile coincide with protests erupting globally, Fault Lines follows the Chilean student movement during their fight in a country plagued by economic inequality.