Hitchens Sums Things Up

The Global Movement: Many Uprisings Fighting For The Same Cause

By Liam Fox, News Junkie Post

The current global uprisings are neither ideological nor sectarian in their genesis. Some individuals or isolated groups that articulate their values and principles through the context of particular theologies, or political ideologies, have joined in the uprisings but the uprisings themselves find their roots in a much deeper foundation than religion or organized politics.

This is a movement of individuals whose realities and fundamental needs as human beings have fueled a political event… not individuals who are acting out in furtherance of a political party or the proselytizing of an authoritarian theology. The principles being expressed, defended, claimed, and championed, are the fundamental rights and needs of human beings. These principles can only hope to be expressed through doctrines, constitutions, laws, and political institutions; they are not derived from them.

The nature of these uprisings — from Tunisia to Greece, from Libya to Ireland, and from Egypt to America — is not the product of our attempts to communicate and codify these principles. These uprisings are based on the unadulterated principles themselves. The principles defy the need for articulation. They are intrinsic to our nature.

The most profound ideas are often the most simple. Their purity is unassailable. Equality, emancipation, justice, self-determination, and liberty. While the depth of their nature may be explored by philosophers, they do not require an ideological treatise to convince of their credibility. Intellectualized and litigious political ideologies serve more often to justify the violation of these very simple, yet very profound, principles. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of words, to justify why equality can only be allowed for some, why poverty should be the natural state of the vast majority, and that the sole value of our existence is based on our commodification.

What value we represent to the economy, rather than what value the economy is to us, has become the inversion that the global community is reacting to and endeavoring to correct.

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Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software

By John Markoff, New York Times

When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates.

But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.

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Onions Against Dictators

Onions Against Dictators - Torservers.net supports democracy movements by providing uncensorable gateway to free Internet; receives $10,000 grant from Access Now

PDF: https://www.torservers.net/files/Onions-against-Dictators.pdf (March 8th 2011)
Text: https://www.torservers.net/files/Onions-against-Dictators.txt (March 8th 2011)
Image: http://www.torservers.net/images/torservers.jpg
German Press Releases: https://www.torservers.net/wiki/presse

Uncensored access to the Internet can overthrow dictators and aid the creation of free societies. This has been shown by recent events in North Africa and the Middle East. Whether in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya - the revolution is inseparably linked to free communication and unhindered access to independent news and media.
Till today the Torservers.net project has been graciously financed by private donations from supporters. Now, founder Moritz Bartl and his team have partnered with Access Now. Torservers.net has received a $10,000 US Dollars grant from Access Now that allows for a major capacity upgrade as an immediate tech response to support freedom movements all around the globe. This makes Torservers.net the largest operator on the Tor network.

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Council tax protesters storm courtroom and 'arrest' judge

According to the Daily Mail:

...Deafening cheers and chants could be heard from the crowd outside the courts and demonstrators used mobile phones to film arrests being made.

The protesters were from the anti-establishment British Constitution Group (BGC).

The demonstration was sparked when a prominent voice in the BCG, Roger Hayes, from Wirral, faced a bankruptcy hearing for non-payment of council tax.

Around 600 chanting demonstrators had massed around the court in support of Mr Hayes. Roads were blockaded and dozens of police officers deployed to keep order.

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Bolivian President Uses Former DEA Agent’s Book to Send Message to the World

Bill Conroy reports for Narconews

... Could Sanabria's arrest instead be evidence of another "cocaine coup" in the making? Might that be the message Morales is sending by displaying Levine’s book for the world to see in the wake of the arrest of Bolivia's counternarcotics chief?

That conspiracy theory might sound outlandish to some. But then history isn't a subject everyone is equally comfortable embracing.

From an essay written by Levine that discusses the "cocaine coup" in Bolivia:

On July 17, 1980, for the first time in history, drug traffickers actually took control of a nation. It was not just any nation, it was Bolivia, at the time the source of virtually 100 percent of the cocaine entering the United States. The “Cocaine Coup” was the bloodiest in Bolivia’s history. It came at a time that the US demand for cocaine was skyrocketing to the point that, in order to satisfy it, suppliers had to consolidate raw materials and production and get rid of inefficient producers. Its result was the creation of what came to be known as La Corporacion — The Corporation — in essence, the General Motors or OPEC of Cocaine.

Immediately after the coup production of cocaine increased massively until, in short order, it outstripped supply. It was the true beginning of the cocaine and crack “plague” as the media and hack politicians never tire of calling it. July 17, 1980 is truly a day that should live in equal infamy along with December 7th, 1941. There are few events in history that have caused more and longer lasting damage to our nation.

What America was never told, in spite of mainstream media having the information and a prime, inside source who was ready to go public with the story, was that the coup was carried out with the aid and participation of Central Intelligence. The source would also testify and prove that, in order to carry out that coup, the CIA, State and Justice departments had to combine forces to protect their drug dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation—US v Roberto Suarez, et al. How do I know? I was that inside source. ...

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Revolution in the Age of Facebook

by Michael I. Niman, ArtVoice

For the past three weeks our screens have been awash with images of indignant Egyptians defying their brutal government with a loud, unprecedented, unified call for democracy. Our radios hummed with an accented song of rage, indignation, hope, and, finally, triumph and jubilation. The script for this drama moved fast, as if made for generations weaned on the ADHD world of TV. It was three weeks from the first public signs of discontent to the fall of Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak. The whole scenario has played out with almost no bloodshed so far.

Prior to this month, Egypt had been a dictatorship of one sort or another for 6,000 years.

Like a House Party, But Bigger

The genesis for this revolution, upending one of the most firmly entrenched status quos in history, took form last month as Facebook chatter. Like American college students planning a 40s-and-blunts party, Egypt's soon-to-be revolutionaries posted calls for their online community to meet up in public squares and peaceably call for an overthrow of their ancient dictatorship. And, like the invite for the house party that drew a thousand guests, the Egyptian Facebook call for revolution went viral.

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~ See also: To Celebrate The #Jan25 Revolution, Egyptian Names His Firstborn “Facebook” ~