My experience, my recovering:

There’s cancer to care for.
What’s good for me is she died in our bed,
sleeping delighted,
stunned day to day in our love.

And also, there’s Hitchens:

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span.

However …

There are a thousand striking at the branches of evil to one that is striking at the root.

8 April, 2011: Keynote at National Media Reform Conference, calling for rootstrikers, and launching a project of FixCongressFirst: rootstrikers.org

The 2012 TED Prize has been awarded to an idea and not an individual.

Bill Moyers:

Those “men of action in the capitalist world” were not content with their wealth just to buy more homes, more cars, more planes, more vacations and more gizmos than anyone else.

They were determined to buy more democracy than anyone else.

And they succeeded beyond their expectations.

After their forty-year “veritable crusade” against our institutions, laws and regulations—against the ideas, norms and beliefs that helped to create America’s iconic middle class—the Gilded Age is back with a vengeance.

Second_Bill_of_Rights:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.

The mask, a sallow, smirking likeness of Guy Fawkes, was created in 1982 by Alan Moore and the artist David Lloyd.

At Occupy sit-ins in New York, Moscow, Rio, Rome, Athens and the gatherings outside G20 and G8 conferences in London and L’Aquila, the V for Vendetta mask has been a fixture.

Alan Moore is ‘baffled, tickled, roused and quite pleased’ that his creation has become an emblem of modern activism.

“I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.”

So it is perhaps unsurprising that our recent economic crisis had some characteristics of boom-and-busts in less developed nations. It was triggered, in part, by 1 percenters on Wall Street persuading regulators to remove restrictions on their casino. It led workers to pile on debt to supplement falling incomes. It ended with a vast deployment of tax dollars to bail out fallen plutocrats. And our political system seems unable to deal with the aftermath.

NY Times asserts Republican are misguided protectors of the 1%:

The Republican right is pushing back hard against the 99 percent movement and its focus on the widening chasm between the fortunes of the few at the summit of the income scale and everybody else.

Newt Gingrich, who led the field of Republican presidential candidates last week, argued that the concept of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent is ‘un-American’. His rival Rick Perry, who led the Republican pack in September, answered a question about taxes and inequality by saying “I don’t care about that.”

“The [rich media propaganda] tells you ‘I’m the cow that gives you milk’. Well yes they may be the cow that gives you milk, but we’re the grass that feeds that cow.”

In the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, medalist John Carlos and his teammate Tommie Smith raised the fist salute to represent Power-To-The-People on the medal podium.

The Sports Moment That Changed The World.

ba-ba-ding:

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy.

Big corporations spend more money lobbying than they pay in taxes !

arrrrgh… $millions$ $misplaced$

“If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.” — Chinese Proverb

What’s the difference between productive wealth and destructive wealth? What if Gross Domestic Product made a fundamental distinction between the two — between making money by producing real value for others, versus just making money by exploiting others?

Justice vs. Paramilitary.

A calm & detailed account: myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com

The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park.

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Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.

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It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized.

LA’s mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says this is “the LAPD’s finest hour”.