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how does one fulfill the role of citizen in the midst of accepted public hypocrisy? how can humans learn to communicate with each other? how can i learn to be present, in the moment, to my surroundings? --- In the 18th century, recording someone's thoughts or speech or regulating their private behaviour without entering their property or seizing physical objects was impossible and unimaginable. That isn't so now. A supervisory state claims it must, for our security, monitor who we talk to, regulate what we read or say, wherever it has the power to record. It "must" because it can. --- Civil and political liberties aren't tradeable for physical security. They are the sole reason we have it. -- guy herbert

Member Since: June 29, 2006

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This story has mostly positive ratings. 8 votes / No sinks

The Tragic Failure of the Prague Spring

News – But Czechoslovakia's experiment became its tragedy on the night of August 21, 1968, when the armies of fellow Warsaw Pact countries invaded. Students in Prague graffitied on a building wall, "Lenin, wake up, they've gone mad."

View Story Discuss (5) (spiegel.de) 3 hours ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 05, 2008 04:07am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 9 votes / No sinks

Two Speeches, Two Truths About America

Politics – His speech confronted dark truths: that there was an immeasurable difference between free whites and blacks in chains; that the blessings his audience enjoyed were not enjoyed by all Americans. "You may rejoice," Douglass lamented. "I must mourn."

View Story Discuss (0) (washingtonpost.com) 5 hours ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 05, 2008 01:53am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 23 votes / No sinks

Pumping Up the Anxiety

Politics – It's not clear what was going through President Bush's head yesterday morning, but his words certainly didn't dampen the growing speculation that the U.S. -- or Israel -- is planning to attack Iran before January.

View Story Discuss (4) (washingtonpost.com) 1 day ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 04, 2008 03:36am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 22 votes / No sinks

Big Oil's Iraq deals are the greatest stick-up in history

Politics – Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual in itself. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies - not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth.

View Story Discuss (0) (guardian.co.uk) 1 day ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 04, 2008 12:36am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 14 votes / No sinks

The Chagos islanders' long wait for justice

News – The Chagos archipelago - comprising Diego Garcia and several smaller coral atolls - lies in the Indian Ocean between the Maldives and Mauritius. This very isolation sealed the islanders' fate.

View Story Discuss (0) (guardian.co.uk) 1 day ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 04, 2008 12:31am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 31 votes / No sinks

Bush's Accountability Moment?

Politics – President Bush's record unpopularity is playing an unprecedented role in the 2008 campaign, complicating John McCain's task among key constituencies. Mr. Bush received a 66% disapproval rating in The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll for June, tying his own record for the highest ever for any president in the Journal/NBC poll.

View Story Discuss (2) (washingtonpost.com) 1 day ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 03, 2008 10:48am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 22 votes / No sinks

More Homeland Insecurity

Politics – In another bizarre twist to Washington's often illegal, irrational "war on terror", peaceful, lawful human rights campaigners are now apparently being refused entry to the US -- without any right of appeal.

View Story Discuss (1) (guardian.co.uk) 2 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 03, 2008 03:05am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 21 votes / No sinks

American President Pleads Guilty to Hopeless Idealism

Politics – Or perhaps after working with Torquemada Cheney all these years, W. simply feels more at home in a monarchy. At the end of dinner he posed under a portrait of Elizabeth I in the drawing room and gayly promised: "This is going to be my White House Christmas card."

View Story Discuss (2) (nytimes.com) 2 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 03, 2008 02:21am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 31 votes / 1 sink

Results of US Invasion of Iraq

News – In an interview with the BBC, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticised the US-led war in Iraq was illegal, saying that "the level of violence in Iraq was 'much worse' than that of a civil war."

View Story Discuss (3) (iran-press-service.com) 2 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 03, 2008 01:02am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 24 votes / No sinks

Secularism: New arrests as Turkish court hears attempt to ban ruling party

News – Turkey's tottering political system edged further towards breakdown yesterday as police arrested 24 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the government hours before a prosecutor went before the country's highest court demanding the dissolution of the ruling party.

View Story Discuss (0) (guardian.co.uk) 2 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 10:35pm

This story has mostly positive ratings. 32 votes / No sinks

The shifting sands of freedom

Politics – A supervisory state claims it must, for our security, monitor who we talk to, regulate what we read or say, wherever it has the power to record. It "must" because it can. Civil and political liberties aren't tradeable for physical security. They are the sole reason we have it.

View Story Discuss (2) (guardian.co.uk) 3 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 02:45am

Report berkeley’s Notes

In the 18th century, recording someone's thoughts or speech or

regulating their private behaviour without entering their property or

seizing physical objects was impossible and unimaginable. That isn't so now. A supervisory state claims it must, for our security, monitor who we talk to, regulate what we read or say, wherever it has the power to record. It "must" because it can.

Civil and political liberties aren't tradeable for physical security. They are the sole reason we have it.

This story has mostly positive ratings. 26 votes / No sinks

Why floods could bring America to its knees

Food – Like a lot of other activities in American life these days, agribusiness is unreformable along its current lines. It will take a convulsion to change it, and in that convulsion it will be dragged kicking-and-screaming into a new reality. As that occurs, the US public will have to contend with more than just higher taco chip prices.

View Story Discuss (1) (moneyweek.com) 3 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 02:02am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 23 votes / No sinks

Myth: Israel's Strike on Iraqi Reactor Hindered Iraqi Nukes

Politics – Many claim that the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor delayed Iraq's nuclear bomb program. But the Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful, and the Osirak reactor was not only unsuited to making bombs but was under intensive safeguards.

View Story Discuss (3) (accuracy.org) 3 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 12:56am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 21 votes / No sinks

U.S. court ruling on Arar enables gov't to send foreigners to torture, says lawyer

Politics – "He's rightfully angered that he cannot get justice, and that not only can he not get justice, but that his being sent to torture has now been in vain because he can't even stop the government from doing it to someone else."

View Story Discuss (2) (canadianpress.google.com) 3 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 12:39am

This story has mostly positive ratings. 30 votes / 1 sink

Iran is not the belligerent party

Politics – The stance of the US and its allies is not only based on an unfounded and unfair premise, it reeks of hypocrisy when nuclear-armed Israel has a green light to continue its ridiculous policy of nuclear ambiguity and is not being pressed to sign-up to the NPT.

View Story Discuss (0) (gulfnews.com) 3 days ago by berkeley

Submitted and Voted for on July 02, 2008 12:32am

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