Upping the ante — Recipe for a Revolution

Opposition to NDAA has upped the ante significantly. The concurrent trial of Bradley Manning, and the threat to implicate Julian Assange is adding fuel to the fire. Is widespread civil disobedience and economic pressure the nest step for the gathering movement?

Recipe for a Revolution from StormClouds Gathering

UPDATE: "Twitter terrorism." I kid  you not.

Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts?
by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

That is the heart and soul of the U.S. Government’s framework: we can do what we want, in total secrecy and with no checks, including to U.S. citizens, and you don’t need to know anything about it and we need no checks: you should just trust us.

Has any government earned that trust? Silly me, I thought this was exactly what liberal democracy was designed to avoid. Oh, and isn't liberal democracy the sine qua non of "free market capitalism"? That's what I was taught anyway.

UPDATE:

Read it at CounterPunch
America’s Silent Collapse
by Sam Smith, editor at the Progressive Review. He is the author of The Great American Repair Manual.

One of the curiosities of being chronically ahead of the mainstream is that periodically you suddenly discover that you’re not. For example, over the past decade I’ve putting forth the notion, seemingly bizarre to many, that the First American Republic was over and that we had moved into a post constitutional adhocracy. Lately, however, the idea seems to be becoming increasingly mundane, almost like saying, “Geez, that was a lot of rain we had.”

But when did it shift from being a radical thought to becoming so inevitable? I don’t remember people debating it on corporate TV, writing about it in the NY Times, arguing it in a campaign speech, or analyzing it in a professorial paper. It just happened. The most important development in our nation’s history since the Civil War crept into the room like a shy new guest. And somewhere in between, radical conjecture transformed itself into the norm.

UPDATE:

Read it at CounterPunch
Raging Against the Machine
by David Michael Green, professor of political science at Hofstra University

If it feels to you a bit reminiscent of 1968 these days, that’s because it is.

And that’s a good thing.

It’s starting to look like 2011 was the year of Basta!, when people finally woke up and found the voice with which to say Enough! 

These are all knock your socks of postings, and they show that this is 1968 redux. This is just the beginning of it, and it is going to have far-reaching social, political and economic consequences. Even if the protestors don't "win" a decisive victory, these experiences will shape the upcoming generation, expecially the millennials and post-millennials, and through them shape the future course of history as they accede to power with the passage of the silent generation and the boomers.