Quote Of The Day

Rebecca Solnit's op-ed at Al Jazeera:

When civil society sleeps, we're just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy.

Consider the liberal mayor of Oakland, who speaks with outrage of people camping without a permit but has nothing to say about the police she dispatched to tear-gas a woman in a wheelchair, shoot a young Iraq war veteran in the head, and assault people while they slept. Consider the billionaire mayor of New York who dispatched the NYPD on a similar middle-of-the-night raid on November 15. Recall this item included in a bald list of events that night: "Tear-gassing the kitchen tent." Ask yourself when did kitchens really need to be attacked with chemical weapons?

Ms Civil Society vs Mr Unaccountable

I think the long process of waking America up is just beginning. The next few years are going to be troubled. How troubled they are depends largely on the limited smarts and extremely limited humanity of the upper classes, both in America and Europe. How soon they wake up to the fact that their world is changing, too, depends upon those rare and little-valued traits.