I work with other progressives who use Microsoft. This seems strange to me. We wring our hands about what shall we do to defeat the Empire-of-the-very-very-wealthy-few_at-the-expense-of-the-many, but we don't see what is right in front of our eyes: Open Source is politics. Its a part of the needed revolution. It involves killing no-one and using it rather that Microsoft for most people is no sacrifice at all. It is cheaper and more stable. It has become user friendly. You can't down-load instant movies from Netflix on it. Big sacrifice. But maybe I can live with it.

Maybe I should get more aggressive with my friends. Should say, "if you claim you are interested in the revolution, yet you write your tracts on Microsoft, you are a hypocrite."

Will be her downfall.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/05/condi_rice_we_didnt_torture_an.html

In the video, she does not listen to her questioner, attempts to belittle the student, and eventually makes the absolutely idiotic statement:

"[By] definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

Later, this was nailed to the door of Stanford's president:

I don't know who should be fired first -- the cops involved or the school administrators. Have we in the US completely lost all common sense?!

12 year old boy arrested after deliberately "breaking wind" in school class

A 12-year-old student from Florida was arrested November 4 for breaking wind during class and disturbing his classmates by shutting off their computers at Stuar's Spectrum Jr./Sr. High School.

The police called this a "deliberately passed gas to disrupt the class" and "disruption of a school function"

is outdated. Now we should find some other boogeyman.

Among the people arrested in Minnesota in this weekend's heavy-handed (and that's about as polite as I can put it) police suppression of the first amendment is Amy Goodman. Alternet story is here. Glenn Greenwald's account is here.