Olive ridley sea turtles are amazing creatures. Every year between December and March, hundreds of them swim home to lay their eggs on the beaches of the coastal metropolis of Chennai, aka Madras, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Source: Tom Dispatch
[A longer version of this essay appears in “Lines of Work,” the Spring 2011 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly and is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]
Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man. — Henry George
The news media these days look to outperform one another in their showings of concern for the lost battalion of America’s unemployed. Consult any newspaper, wander the Internet or the television talk-show circuit, and at the top of the column or the hour the headline is jobs. Jobs, the bedrock of America’s world-beating prosperity, the cornerstones of its future comfort and well-being — gone to Mexico or China, deleted from payrolls in Michigan and Ohio, mothballed in the Arizona desert.
Source: Tom Dispatch
Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.
Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. The women of Cairo do not move as freely in public as they did during those few precious weeks when the old rules were suspended and everything was different. But the old Egypt is gone and Egyptians’ sense of themselves — and our sense of them — is forever changed.
“There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," says Noam Chomsky.
From across North Africa to Wisconsin, activists are navigating a new terrain of global protest and relationships with their governments. Whether in ousting old tyrants or dealing with new allies in office, the example of Bolivia holds many lessons for social movements.
In Santiago, Chile a week long Hip Hop Festival called Planeta Rock celebrated all the five elements of hip hop; knowledge, break dancing, graffiti, mc'ing, and djaying
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