Welcome to Our New State of Being

May 1, 2020—Here it is—another glorious First of May. Workers the world around are standing up for their rights—generally at a safe distance. Here in the U.S., of course, it’s traditional to ignore International Workers Day; and by traditional, of course, we mean perverse. The day, after all, was chosen to mark an American massacre of workers, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, on May 4th, 1886. The selection of that particular event could be seen as almost arbitrary. That entire stretch of American history, from the Civil War to Armistice Day, could accurately be described as a slow-motion massacre of American workers. The winners …

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Occupy Earth

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 — The movement began, quite brilliantly, as an occupation of one location: the seat of power — Wall Street. By striking at the root of the problem, it changed the global topic of conversation in just two months. Unlike the collapse of the global Ponzi scheme, no one could have predicted that. The question now is how to proceed. We propose the continuation and expansion of the occupation, by means of Inescapable Newspapers. Allow us to briefly explain. (Again. See previous discussions of this idea here, here, here, and here.) Information that Shimmers If you were to ask a fish what …

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Winter is Coming

Thursday, October 27, 2011 — Winter is coming. This will make the Occupations — which can now be declared a success — more difficult to sustain. We believe the current physical Occupations can and should be transformed into an unprecedented free media space, uninfluenced by and impervious to corporate power, and covering the entire nation. Properly done this plan would not only extend the presence of the Occupation everywhere, but would give the people of each district a powerful tool to dislodge Members of Congress who do not serve them. There are about 100 million households in the U.S, and 435 Congressional Districts. Each district …

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The Future of News is the Future of Civilization

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 — BusinessInsider recently invited the Editor of this paper to be one of a group of “thought leaders describing their vision of the future of news.” Here is his response, followed by some elaboration. (The alleged Editor of the Gazette, and Glenn Beck: together at last. Who’d a’ thunk it?) The future of news is the future of civilization. Current media practices distort the democratic process in ways that favor those who are already far too powerful, as the recent debt ceiling imbroglio amply demonstrates. Humans distracted by the newest technologies tend to overlook powerful mature technologies; low-cost web offset printing …

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Because It Worked So Well in California

Thursday, July 21, 2011 — So, here we are, pole-axed by what is probably but a hint of summers to come, our government paralyzed by an intransigent cult elected by the least informed, most easily manipulated sector of the electorate, and some of the nation’s best minds are advocating that we break through this impasse with a National Initiative for Democracy, a “meta-legislative proposal that would allow citizens, independently of Congress and the Executive, to propose and vote on laws.” What, because Proposition 13 worked so well for California? Granted, NI4D would “outlaw the use of funds from non-natural persons (for example corporate funds) in …

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Funny You Should Ask, Dave …

Sunday, January 16, 2011 — A fortnight ago we celebrated the arrival of the New Year with a little experiment. We hung a blank page up “in the cloud,” just to see what would happen to it. Bud in Kingston promptly used it to pass on a friendly word, and, for a while, that was that. A couple of days ago we began some long-overdue remedial posting, to fill the big gap between the kludgy PDF archives of our 2008 and 2009 papers, and the present. So far we have posted ten Fortnightly Rants, from January 15 through May 21, 2010. Our plan for today …

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