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Ghost Dog

Ghost Dog's Journal
Ghost Dog's Journal
April 10, 2016

Nuit debout occupies French cities



Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Friday 8 April 2016 17.31 BST Last modified on Friday 8 April 2016 22.25 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/nuit-debout-protesters-occupy-french-cities-in-a-revolutionary-call-for-change

As night fell over Paris, thousands of people sat cross-legged in the vast square at Place de la République, taking turns to pass round a microphone and denounce everything from the dominance of Google to tax evasion or inequality on housing estates.

The debating continued into the early hours of the morning, with soup and sandwiches on hand in the canteen tent and a protest choir singing revolutionary songs. A handful of protesters in tents then bedded down to “occupy” the square for the night before being asked to move on by police just before dawn. But the next morning they returned to set up their protest camp again.

For more than a week, these vast nocturnal protest gatherings – from parents with babies to students, workers, artists and pensioners – have spread across France, rising in number, and are beginning to panic the government.

Called Nuit debout, which loosely means “rise up at night”, the protest movement is increasingly being likened to the Occupy initiative that mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in 2011 or Spain’s Indignados...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/nuit-debout-protesters-occupy-french-cities-in-a-revolutionary-call-for-change

Xpost Occupy Underground
April 10, 2016

Nuit debout occupies French cities



Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Friday 8 April 2016 17.31 BST Last modified on Friday 8 April 2016 22.25 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/nuit-debout-protesters-occupy-french-cities-in-a-revolutionary-call-for-change

As night fell over Paris, thousands of people sat cross-legged in the vast square at Place de la République, taking turns to pass round a microphone and denounce everything from the dominance of Google to tax evasion or inequality on housing estates.

The debating continued into the early hours of the morning, with soup and sandwiches on hand in the canteen tent and a protest choir singing revolutionary songs. A handful of protesters in tents then bedded down to “occupy” the square for the night before being asked to move on by police just before dawn. But the next morning they returned to set up their protest camp again.

For more than a week, these vast nocturnal protest gatherings – from parents with babies to students, workers, artists and pensioners – have spread across France, rising in number, and are beginning to panic the government.

Called Nuit debout, which loosely means “rise up at night”, the protest movement is increasingly being likened to the Occupy initiative that mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in 2011 or Spain’s Indignados...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/nuit-debout-protesters-occupy-french-cities-in-a-revolutionary-call-for-change

Xpost Foreign Affairs
April 7, 2016

Nice read, thanks, but misses the point. Briefly,

It is the consumptive imperative growth-paradigm of contemporary capitalism as it operates in practice in most of the world today, and from which stems excessive energy demand, that is the overarching problem to be solved.

As an anarcho-environmental-socialist, if you will, I would not necessarily dismiss the use of nuclear fission or fusion electrical energy generation, whatever the degree of central- or decentralisation (mini-generators could be of interest), as part of a system of intelligently-designed, regulated and operated economies.

My point is that everything depends on this re-design and succesful implementation of new kinds of society.

But you say you do not care, ...

I don't care what social system builds nuclear power plants, so long as they are built
.

... apparantly assuming a priori that business-as-usual must persist, ...

My advocacy of nuclear power is about the crisis in climate change on a world that now holds six and one half billion people, many of whom who have no access to decent living conditions.


... in societies which provide for far from decent living conditions for too many.

Where you mention a preference for integrated public trsnsport systems, however, you do imply some social change.

Greetings.
April 4, 2016

Well... "public interest for your country..." ?

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/reporters-pulled-off-panama-papers-biggest-leak-whistleblower-history/

... Neither the ICIJ nor any of the reporters it’s worked with have made the leaked data public...

... Ryle says that the media organizations have no plans to release the full dataset, WikiLeaks-style, which he argues would expose the sensitive information of innocent private individuals along with the public figures on which the group’s reporting has focused. “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” Ryle says. He says he advised the reporters from all the participating media outlets to “go crazy, but tell us what’s in the public interest for your country.”...
April 4, 2016

Want to bet?

https://m.oddschecker.com/m/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/democrat-candidate



More at link... Kerry more likely than Sanders? How? Discuss...
April 3, 2016

"I'm 100% Sure" The US Presidential Campaign Is Being Tampered With

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-02/how-hack-presidential-election

There is a growing recognition of the increasing tail wagging the dog nature of the internet's control over election outcomes.We recently detailed "the hidden persuaders"at work showing how the internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do. Confirming all of this to be chillingly true is Andrés Sepúlveda, who rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. On the question of whether the U.S. presidential campaign is being tampered with, he is unequivocal - "I'm 100 percent sure it is."

Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger excerpts a must-read Bloomberg article,

In July 2015, Sepúlveda sat in the small courtyard of the Bunker, poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos, and took out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. He says he wants to tell his story because the public doesn’t grasp the power hackers exert over modern elections or the specialized skills needed to stop them. “I worked with presidents, public figures with great power, and did many things with absolutely no regrets because I did it with full conviction and under a clear objective, to end dictatorship and socialist governments in Latin America,” he says. “I have always said that there are two types of politics—what people see and what really makes things happen. I worked in politics that are not seen.”

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him quickly change names, profile pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard—or, as he puts it, “When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”

Sepúlveda says he was offered several political jobs in Spain, which he says he turned down because he was too busy. On the question of whether the U.S. presidential campaign is being tampered with, he is unequivocal.“I’m 100 percent sure it is,” he says.

– From the excellent Bloomberg article: How to Hack an Election.
April 3, 2016

It's never too late, in a sense, because we have no alternative

but to seek to live in and adapt to the (changing) environment. But, and it's a big but, to maintain the kinds of (consumption-mad, resource-hungry and environmentally-destructive) societies that have been developed, quite unthinkingly, in what we call the 'rich' world is impossible: it is already too late...

Radical social change is coming, is already happening. I'd say that by the end of the next 7-8-year cycle everyone in this world will be aware, and many more than now will be suffering.

Thanks for the question pscot. I don't want to be a downer: it is healthy to think and feel positively. It is far too late for prevention. There is room for some attempts at mitigation (involving social as well as technical change) but, mid- to long-term, adaptation has to be the name of the game. This will involve radical social, especially in terms of how economies are perceived and operated, change.

April 2, 2016

Well, if nobody else, I will post this here (April 1):

Exclusive: royal family considering dramatic Brexit intervention

Royals are believed to be willing to risk a potential constitutional crisis to express their anger over the leave campaign...

.. Using outside experts who advised that the intervention would need to be presented by a figure with impeccable European credentials, a strong affinity with the continent and the character to speak out, the family has decided that the move should (be) fronted by Prince Philip.

“He has been hugely impressed by the way the EU stepped in, not just once but several times, to save Greece,” said one official with knowledge of events. “He admires what Tsipras and Varoufakis achieved – in fact he told friends he sees something of his younger self in the charismatic, motorbike-riding, eye-for-the-ladies Varoufakis. Mind you,” added the source, “he also thinks the Greeks would never have got into this mess if the colonels had still been in power.”...

... Remaining questions of strategy are being resolved by an inner circle at the palace. On timing, the date picked for Philip to make a nationwide address is 10 June, crucially just two weeks before the referendum on 23 June. Courtiers have noted the added poignancy of 10 June – it is Philip’s 95th birthday.

On which platform to use, the source said: “We want to avoid that ‘bloody little man’, as Charles called BBC royal reporter Nicholas Witchell.”

Kensington Palace sources say the choice is a tight one between ITV’s news anchor Tom Bradby, who is preferred by Prince William, and Prince Harry’s strong favourites Ant and Dec. Harry argues that the Saturday Night Takeaway presenters would reach a different demographic and be particularly appealing to “people in the north with accents”...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/01/exclusive-royal-family-considering-dramatic-brexit-intervention

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Hometown: Canary Islands Archipelago
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About Ghost Dog

A Brit many years in Spain, Catalunya, Baleares, Canarias. Cooperative member. Geography. Ecology. Cartography. Software. Sound Recording. Music Production. Languages & Literature. History.
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