We’ve seen everything from an ATM to a printer run Doom, but Ochre Jelly recently took a much more analog approach. The brickmaster built several scenes from the game out of Lego bricks. The medium does a great job of simulating those early-’90s graphics, we love so much.
Good news, Mac users. Apple just released an update for OS X that fixes a security flaw in the Bash UNIX shell. This is the part of the software that’s vulnerable to the Shellshock bug uncovered last week . And although the vulnerability only affects a small number of Mac users, a fix is certainly welcome.
Although OS X is among the systems listed as vulnerable to the recently-uncovered Shellshock / Bash security flaw (still not sure what that is? Let us explain.), Apple has said it isn’t a problem for most users. For those potentially vulnerable due…
As much as we enjoy Parrot’s advanced Zik Bluetooth headphones, many complained that they’re a tad on the hefty side, and not everyone’s a fan of the earcups’ bulky look. Worry not, though, as the French company has finally delivered a new and…
Contrary to earlier rumors, HP’s Chromebook-like Stream 14 turned out to be more expensive than people had hoped for when it was announced a few weeks ago. Having said that, today HP is finally introducing its $199 laptop with Windows, staying in…
Welcome, ladygeeks and gentlenerds, to the new era of gaming. The one where you get to watch, and comment, as other people livestream gameplay from next-gen consoles. Because games! They’re fun!…
“America can do better than capitalism”. Richard Wolff declared these words at Riverside Church on January 22, 2012. His affirmation surfaced the sentiments that many Americans harbor. I suspect that we submerge our discontent for many reasons. Among them, we fancy the illusion that the Federal Reserve Bank and the three branches of our federal government can manage the booms and busts of our business cycle. Perhaps the right mix of Democrats and Republicans will address the market failures of concentrated power among corporations, spillover costs borne by communities, and the information gap between producers and consumers. One of these glad mornings, our candidate of choice will assume power, appoint the right judges, roll out the right policies in 100 days, and administer the good government of our dreams. We envision an America that forever grows the economic pie, splits it fairly for every race in all places, and inaugurates the E Pluribus Unum country of our civic rituals. This is the hope of our nation — comprehensive political liberties, complemented by justice in our courts, prosperity in our commerce, peace in our communities. I, too, dream America. I do not, however, believe that capitalism delivers on the promises rehearsed every November.
Instead of democratic capitalism, I propose that democratic socialism serve as the regulative ideal of our life together. What this means is that I support scaling up — and bringing forward — the already existing aspects of cooperative organization in American history and our contemporary moment. Though largely unknown, some regional authorities possess the title of flourishing utilities, municipalities own convention centers and plan our land use strategies, and within the past decade, we temporarily nationalized our banks. By ignorance or intention, political figures and institutional actors within Washington deny this reality, which is well-documented by Gar Alperwotiz’s classic text, What Then Must We Do.
Socialism, or something like it, is the settled conclusion of a society that values democracy. Our bloody past, and historical arguments notwithstanding, I take it as a given that Americans cherish democracy. Despite our violent acquisition of indigenous land and our coercive leveraging of black slaves as financial instruments, the postcolonial story of America, set against the landholding, white-males only, yet egalitarian image of our Constitution is still an idea worthy of perennial refinement into our laws, practices, and governance.
So, how might we ramp up democratic socialism within our already mixed economy? Our intellectuals can excavate little-known histories of American cooperative work, tell the oft-told story of a commonwealth country, and no longer provide conceptual legitimacy for the notion of democratic capitalism. As a citizen preacher, I recall the legacies of Angela Davis and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, emerging outlets like Jacobin magazine, and veteran groups like Democratic Socialists of America.
Secondly, we can celebrate conceptual openness to a new political economy. The Pew study indicates that socialism among millennials possesses more fans than opponents—49 percent hold a positive view of it; 43 percent, not so much. Inferences from this study have been overstated, but this seems fair: the inequalities and externalities of capitalism have created a hearing for socialist arguments, campaigns, and messaging strategies.
Thirdly, we can organize in a way that emphasizes participatory governance, increasing commonwealth stewardship of real estate, and alternate business structures like B Corps, LC3, etc. In many ways, socialism of this sort is implied by the work of groups like National People’s Action, Democracy Collaborative, but also folks like Criterion Ventures’ New Economy, the expanding philanthropic commitments of social justice philanthropy, and other developments.
Capitalism seeks to grow the economy while managing inequality. Democratic socialism seeks to secure economic well-being while rearranging the power and productive relationships that create inequality. The latter is neither a panacea nor a utopia. It is, ultimately, a less grotesque analogy of God’s beloved community than the former. America, we can do better than capitalism — let us choose a more equitable, efficient, and excellent way.
As protests against China’s new rules for Hong Kong’s election continued this week, activists have been using umbrellas in an effort to shield themselves from police pepper spray and tear gas.
The umbrellas also have become a potent symbol for those demanding democratic elections. Foreign media started calling the protests the “umbrella revolution.” Participants quickly amended the tag to “umbrella movement.”
According to the Facebook page of Hong Kong Democracy Now:
Foreign media has titled this movement the ‘Umbrella Revolution.’ This is hardly a revolution. ‘Umbrella Movement’ is a more suitable title in this context. The only ‘weapons’ we have, at most, are the umbrellas we always carry in our bags for the unpredictable weather. Hongkongers wish for nothing but stability. However, as much as we cannot see through the cloudy skies, we do not wish to be stormed upon. ‘Umbrella Movement’ represents a mellow but determined campaign: In the face of gale and storm, we will never back down!
As the protests have continued, the umbrellas have become more diverse and more ubiquitous. A a slew of striking images have popped up across social media. A few favorites:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The intruder who climbed a fence made it farther inside the White House than the Secret Service has publicly acknowledged, the Washington Post and New York Times newspapers reported Monday. The disclosures came on the eve of a congressional oversight hearing with the director of the embattled agency assigned to protect the president’s life.
Citing unnamed sources — three people familiar with the incident and a congressional aide — the newspapers said Omar J. Gonzalez ran past the guard at the front door and into the East Room, which is about halfway across the first floor of the building. Gonzalez was eventually “tackled” by a counter-assault agent, according to the Post, which was first to report the news. In the hours after the fence-jumper incident, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told The Associated Press that the suspect had been apprehended just inside the North Portico doors of the White House.
The Secret Service also said that night that the suspect had been unarmed — an assertion that was revealed to be false the next day when officials acknowledged Gonzalez had a knife with him when he was apprehended.
Getting so far would have required Gonzalez to dash through the main entrance hall, turn a corner, then run through the center hallway half-way across the first floor of the building, which spans 168 feet in total, according to the White House Historical Association.
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was scheduled to testify before a House committee on Tuesday for the first time since the Sept. 19 incident. The new details about a far more significant breach were expected to dominate the lawmakers’ inquiries.
A Secret Service spokesman declined to comment on the latest details because of the ongoing investigation.
It was a security lapse that could have had serious consequences, if the intruder had been heavily armed and if the president and his family had been home. No one was hurt in the incident, but it’s not the first involving the White House itself, raising the question whether the latest breach is part of a pattern of delayed reactions to threats to the executive mansion. The Secret Service says that is not the case. And President Barack Obama has confidence in the Secret Service to do its job.
The Post reported over the weekend that the Secret Service did not immediately respond to shots fired at the White House in 2011, amid what the agency describes as uncertainty about where the shots originated. Four days later, it was discovered that at least one of the shots broke the glass of a window on the third level of the mansion, the Secret Service said.
At the time of the 2011 breach, the president and first lady Michelle Obama were away, but their daughters were in Washington — one home and the other due to return that night.
Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez of Idaho has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2011 incident.
Gonzalez, 42, was arrested Sept. 19 after agents stopped him inside the White House front door.
“The president and the first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, but the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job, which is to protect the first family, to protect the White House, but also protect the ability of tourists and members of the public to conduct their business or even tour the White House,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
After the Sept. 19 breach, Pierson ordered a review of the incident and possible changes to security measures at and around the White House. She briefed the president on Thursday.
“The president is interested in the review that they are conducting, and I would anticipate that he’ll review whatever it is they — whatever reforms and recommendations they settle upon,” Earnest said of the Secret Service’s internal review.
Secret Service officers who spotted Gonzalez scaling the fence quickly assessed that he didn’t have any weapons in his hands and wasn’t wearing clothing that could conceal substantial quantities of explosives, a primary reason agents did not fire their weapons, according to a U.S. official briefed on the investigation.
Gonzalez was on the Secret Service radar as early as July when state troopers arrested him during a traffic stop in southwest Virginia. State troopers there said Gonzalez had an illegal sawed-off shotgun and a map of Washington tucked inside a Bible with a circle around the White House, other monuments and campgrounds. The troopers seized a stash of other weapons and ammunition found during a search of Gonzalez’s car after his arrest.
The Secret Service interviewed Gonzalez in July, but had nothing with which to hold him. Gonzalez was released on bail. Then, on Aug. 25, Gonzalez was stopped and questioned again while he was walking along the south fence of the White House. He had a hatchet, but no firearms. His car was searched, but he was not arrested.
“There’s a misperception out there that we have some broad detention powers,” Donovan, the Secret Service spokesman, said. The Secret Service, like other law enforcement agencies, must have evidence of criminal behavior in order to file charges against someone. “Just because we have a concern about someone doesn’t mean we can interview or arrest them or put them in a mental health facility,” Donovan said.
The Secret Service has been trying to rehabilitate its image since a 2012 prostitution scandal erupted during a presidential visit to Colombia.
Earlier this year Pierson met privately with senators after an agent was found drunk in a hotel during a presidential trip to the Netherlands. That incident came just weeks after two agents in Florida were involved in a traffic accident that The Washington Post reported involved alcohol. There were no charges filed against the agents. And Pierson said neither incident was representative of the entire agency.
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Associated Press writer Josh Lederman contributed to this report.
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Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap
Before the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, recedes in the rear-view mirror, let’s be straight with ourselves about what the events surrounding his death tell us about race in America.
Lesson one is that race – an artificial social construct that in this country means a set of physical features and characteristics – matters more than other forms of difference (gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity). Race stands apart mainly because of our inability to reduce or remove racial barriers, improve communication around it or change an enduring and dire set of consequences associated with it.
Second, Ferguson shows us why race remains an intractable issue. The problem is not a matter of individual prejudice but rather one of systemic racial bias or racism. Prejudice may have motivated the officer who shot Michael Brown, but it does not account for centuries of negative outcomes for people on the wrong side of the color line.
And third, Ferguson demonstrates that how we talk (or don’t) about race both reflects and reinforces institutionalized racial bias and its consequences.
Simply expressing our opinions does not advance understanding because opinion keeps racial discourse at a level that is both superficial and inflammatory. So let’s look at the factual basis for my claims.
Race is the different difference. Other historically oppressed groups in the United States have seen dramatic improvement in their circumstances. Women have slowly but surely won a series of victories that have brought them increasing parity, both in the workplace and as legally recognized equal partners in the home. A growing number of states have legalized same-sex marriage and extended the same financial benefits to same-sex couples that are enjoyed by heterosexual couples. Yet the quality of education, mental and physical health, legal protection and other rights, services and outcomes remain markedly inferior for blacks, Latinos, native Americans and others oppressed because of their skin color. Black American adults report, on average, more incidents of racism than other racial minority groups and suffer well-documented psychological stresses as a result. Yet among the 52 examples of stresses listed in a recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, race was not mentioned and discrimination was noted only once.
Racial bias is powerful because it is systemically institutionalized. Our society views race as a set of permanent, heritable characteristics that include temperament, behavior and ability. If you belong to a racial minority, all the things that are thought of about people of that group are thought about you. Thus the police feel entitled to shoot, choke and beat black men because of the belief – engrained over centuries of enslavement, segregation and social racial stratification – that black people, and especially, big, black men, are dangerous.
How we talk about race reflects and reinforces institutionalized racial bias. Race has enormous variability, yet we use terms like “the black community,” as though blacks are a monolithic group whose members all share the same viewpoint. We never say “the white community.”
We say, “Will the black community be calm or will it be upset? We’ve got to keep them calm.” We focus on the behavior of blacks instead of the conditions that contribute to their behavior – for example, the denial of access and opportunity, as illustrated by fact that the police and elected officials in Ferguson are white, while blacks constitute the majority of those stopped, ticketed, fined and sent to prison.
Meanwhile, it’s as if whites aren’t racial beings. When Eric Garner, a black man on Staten Island, died after police put him in a chokehold, interviews with black people focused on their anger about race. White people interviewed primarily were leaders who spoke about containing or moderating the situation. Yet it is white people who primarily construct and influence the daily lives of most black people in our society – so shouldn’t we probe their feelings and beliefs about race, too?
We prefer to discuss racism as hate by individuals, or as a function of economic inequality, with the result that the meaning associated with race and racism is dismantled and fragmented.
When we talk about Ferguson in 2014, or Los Angeles in 1992 or Newark in 1968, we don’t talk about institutionalized racism as a component of what happens or of why “they” are upset. Rather, we worry that “they” are out of control. We recite the sad litany of names of other young black men – Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Ronald Madison, Sean Bell – but we focus on these killings as isolated events. Meanwhile, the list continues to grow. Until we acknowledge that we all have race; that we vary within racial groups in how we understand our race; and that racism hurts and harms people emotionally, the numbers will continue to be too great for any of us to bear.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
