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‘Waiting for Godot’: The Video Game – Yes, This Is Happening

If you can bear the excitement, here's a great post by Oliver Miller at Faster Times:

Nothing to be done. Nothing to be done about relentless internet memes, that is. It was only a few days ago that we welcomed the arrival of ‘The Great Gatsby: The Nintendo Game.’ And at the time, we chuckled about translating other great works of literature into 16-bit arcade games. Well, our random literary-game prayers have been answered, and so we present you with… ‘WAITING FOR GODOT: The Video Game,” which we absolutely guarantee is a real thing and not something that we made up at all, and you can play it by clicking right… here.

Yes, yes, yes, it’s an actual working game version of Samuel Beckett’s celebrated play about 20th century despair and ennui. Whoot! Taste the excitement! Now, you can play as Didi or Gogo, and get started on your endless exciting quest of… waiting for Godot.

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Political Humor Throughout the Ages

Featured Speaker: Jeff Henderson, Professor, Greek Language & Literature; Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Classical Studies

Filmed as the third installment of the Discoveries Lecture Series, hosted on behalf of the Boston University Alumni Association, on 17 February 2011.

Occupy Washington to End the Wars

Nicholas Kramer writes at Antiwar.com:

It is not enough to march on the weekend along pre-approved parade routes. It is not enough to write a letter to your elected representative every week if you are the only one doing it. It is not enough to sit down in front of the White House to be arrested. Given that the wars still go on, none of what we have done to this point is enough. Thousands of antiwar Americans will be gathering as usual in Washington on March 19; we must do more. It is time to remind our representatives exactly who it is that they represent and how we feel about what is being done in our names.

An Anti-Social Document Prepared in Secret by the European Commission

By Henry Crapo, Truthout

The Secret Pact: its complete text, here presented as obtained by the European Deputy Patrick Le Hyaric.

"Improved Coordination of Economic Policies in the Euro Zone" [1]

Danger! It contains the program of social regression that the states of the Euro Zone intend to implement in order to satisfy the voracious appetites of the financial markets.

Introduction by the journalist of l’Humanité

This document, dated 25 February and prepared by the president of the Commission, José-Manuel Barroso and the Council president Herman Van Rompuy, is the most recent avatar of a series of texts aiming to make the people pay for the debts contracted by the states in relation to the financial markets, ... debts contracted in order to save those markets. This test was presented last week to the countries of the Euro Zone, in order to prepare the extraordinary summit meeting on Friday.

At the end of that meeting the heads of state and of governments announced the dawn of a new era, that of coordination of the economic policies of the member states.

In fact, this is a headlong rush to implement ineffective policies.

As proof, the financial rating of Greek debt was lowered on Monday. As a result, Athens had to borrow money yesterday at an interest rate higher than that of a month ago. For the moment, the response of the European Union has been to create a European Fund for Financial Stability [2]. This fund borrows on the financial markets, with guarantee of payment by the states of the Euro Zone. The money thus raised is then loaned at 5 to 5.5% to states strangled by the markets. Up to now, Greece and Ireland have benefited from this type of arrangement.

But to provide for a continuing existence of such loans, Germany demands of its partners an iron-clad budgetary discipline, and an application of recipes it has prepared: moderation of salaries, increasing of the age of retirement, etc.

On 12 January, in a communication, the Commission made propositions in this sense. They were recycled and worked over the beginning of February, in the form of a "Pact for Competition" [3] agreed to by the German chancellor Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.

This is the most recent draft, which we present to you. It was concocted without consulting either the European Parliament or the national assemblies. This secret text is worse that the Treaty of Lisbon, in that it intervenes in domains heretofore of national competence, such as training of workers and systems for retirement.

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