System Status
Things have settled down after a weekend of getting hit pretty hard by folks checking out http://2010.mediacoop.ca and http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca.
We've never had to deal with this much traffic and it has been a bumpy ride but it seems we've got a grip on it now.
All services have been affected at various times. Most affected are web sites. There have also been some disruption to mail delivery and lists.
Many thanks to the folks up at all hours making sure that you are able to read your mail and the websites covering this historic convergence.
Rhetorical Militancy for a Rhetorical Mass Movement? If Only We Could Make Them Like Us
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 22:39By John Garvey - March 13, 2010
...[T]he effect of militant tactics and actions depends on the context in which they are undertaken. Excluding militant direct action, and demonizing the people who do it, is and will continue to be divisive and if it were accomplished would significantly shrink the movement, not expand it...Our tactics should only be dictated by what will be most effective in reaching our goals.
Balaclava! VMC Broadsheet Issue 8
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 19:27Documents Detail Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 19:03By Marcia Hofmann - Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The [US] Justice Department released a presentation entitled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites." The slides...detail several social media companies' data retention practices and responses to law enforcement requests. The presentation notes that Facebook was "often cooperative with emergency requests"...The presentation also touches on use of social media for undercover operations.
Conviction in Denmark for Supporting "Terrorist" Organizations
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 18:48By Ron Ridenour - March 16th, 2010
Denmark’s Rebellion (Oprør) spokesman Patrick Mac Manus was found guilty today...for: “attempting to collect funds” for “terrorist organizations” Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); and for “encouraging [hundreds of organizations] to collect funds” for the same.
Poverty, Privilege and Health Care Reform: The Empathy Problem
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 13:53By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO - March 17, 2010
It’s worth reflecting upon why Democrats consider universal health care to be beyond reach...[U]niversal health care programs such as Medicare are widely popular among a majority of the public. Primary opposition comes...from political officials and corporate America...[which] views progressive taxation in the name of universal health care as an unfair burden on the wealthy. It is this group that has led a successful media coup to convince a growing number of the middle class to oppose reform.
Calling All Rebels
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 13:00By Chris Hedges - March 8, 2010
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop...And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
-- Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964
Rachel Corrie's Memory, Israel's Image
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 12:06By Neve Gordon - March 18, 2010
When social justice activists like Rachel Corrie are branded terrorists and international human rights law becomes the enemy of the state...then it becomes absolutely clear that something is terribly wrong.
Florida: Campus Cops Shoot Distraught International Student in Head
Submitted by feed-bot on Thu, 2010-03-18 11:20Tuesday, March 16 2010 - Infoshop News
On Tuesday March 2nd [when]...an international graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong, was having a "nervous breakdown" in his apartment...[t]he University of Florida Police Department responded not by bringing in mental health workers to stabilize the situation, but by breaking down his door, shooting him twice with a taser, three times with bean-bag shotgun shells, and once in the face with an M-4...Kofi Adu-Brempong is now in the hospital in critical condition, and...is facing criminal charges for possessing a weapon (his cane that he uses to walk due to his polio).
