Students for a Democratic Society hosts national convention | Fight ...

SDS protest in Florida (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Gainesville, FL - 70 student activists from all over the country arrived in sunny Gainesville, Florida to attend the annual Students for a Democratic Society National Convention Oct. 27-28. The activists arrived from as far as Utah and Minnesota.

The convention began bright and early with opening statements by Robbey Hayes and Skye Schmelzer from the host Gainesville Chapter.

Stephanie Taylor, a national leader of SDS, reported, ?It was awesome. SDS continues to be the largest anti-war student group, to organize for education rights, and there is a growing trend of struggle supporting women?s and LGBTQ issues. SDS invited the Dream Defenders who spoke about immigrant rights, justice for Trayvon Martin and exposing the Republican Party?s voter suppression in Florida. A Gainesville member of Students for Justice in Palestine spoke about boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel.?

Students attended different workshops, such as ?Bad Acting Theater? and ?Basic Organizing Skills.? SDS affiliate the Revolutionary Students Union presented ?Turning Red States Red.? Other workshops included ?Organizing Immigrant and Farmworker Rights Campaigns on Campus? and ?Combating Male Chauvinism within Your SDS Chapter.? These workshops aimed to offer progressive solutions or evolve a political direction that SDS activists can take.

The plenaries were designed to address issues that are vital for every SDS activist. SDSers learned about the struggle of the LGBQ and trans community in ?Gender & Sexuality: Further Than the Binary? and heard from different campus campaigns in ?Voices from the Left Student Movement and Continuing the Fight for Education Rights.?

Noor Elashi, an award winning author, journalist and an advocate for her father and the Holy Land 5, spoke on the SDS plenary ?Fighting Back Against Political Repression.? Elashi went through a timeline of the Holy Land 5 trial and how she had dealt with the repression - both politically and personally. Elashi read a touching excerpt from her father-daughter memoir where she described the time she visited her father and the harsh and cold treatment she received from the prison guards.

Tom Burke, of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, was also on the panel. Burke is one of the 23 anti-war activists raided by the FBI in 2010. He echoed Elashi?s point about how the FBI targeted the anti-war 23 and The Holy Land 5 for political reasons.

Afterwards, Burke said, ?Speaking to the SDS Convention was a powerful experience. I spoke about the FBI raids and grand jury repression, including members of SDS. I relayed my student experience with the Divest Now! campaign to smash racist Apartheid in South Africa. Then, with the Progressive Student Network in the 1980s, we organized campus protests against CIA recruitment. We acted in solidarity with the revolutionary movements of Nicaragua and El Salvador. In 1991, the PSN helped organize mass rallies to oppose the first U.S. Gulf War on Iraq.?

Burke continued, ?Today?s student activists have known nothing but the U.S. always being at war. I spoke and emphasized the importance of supporting liberation struggles in Colombia and Palestine today, to stop U.S. intervention. Our effective organizing to stop U.S. funding of war and oppression is the reason Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas is continuing his investigation of the 23 anti-war activists, especially focused on Hatem Abudayyeh in Chicago.?

The second day of the SDS convention began by remembering Laura Elizabeth Langley from Alabama SDS and Andrew Stapleton from Tampa Bay SDS who died during the previous year. The room was quiet as emotional speeches were made to commemorate their dedication and commitment to activism, to create a better world.

To guide each chapter in the year head, SDS passed resolutions. Most were a call to action, like ?Close the School of the Americas? (the U.S. school that trains military death squads), and vowing to join the protest Nov. 16-18 at Fort Benning in Georgia. Another one, ?Education Rights Days of Action,? plans to demand funding and access for education in the first week of March 2013. ?SDS - Demand an End to All Wars and Occupations? calls for the end of U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan and an end to the covert war and U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran. It also demands an end to U.S. drone attacks. Another unanimously supported resolution, called for ?Justice for Trayvon Martin.? Lastly, the SDS passed a resolution ?Oppose U.S. Government Political Repression,? as part of the push back against the growing political repression by the U.S. government and police forces.

The day ended with each SDS chapter reporting back on the actions they organized in the past year and relaying their lessons and victories to the rest of convention attendees.

The closing of the convention was a boisterous and loud ?otro golpe,? a Gainesville SDS tradition, which represents ?another strike? against U.S. imperialist war and racism in the U.S. - and looking forward to the next victories for Students for a Democratic Society!

Source: http://www.fightbacknews.org/2012/11/2/students-democratic-society-hosts-national-convention

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THIS WEEK'S POPCORN: 'Seven Psychopaths' insanely ...

By Michael S. Goldberger

Special to the Observer

Do you remember that time in the late 1960s when those two ladies who invited you and your best friend Bob to their cabin in the Catskills probably put something in the turtle soup they served, and afterwards you had strange dreams? Well, filmmaker Martin McDonagh?s black comedy, ?Seven Psychopaths,? should remind you of those reveries.

While appropriate for neither the faint of heart nor those who don?t like their film outings in total freefall, the surreal and often grizzly adventure in which Colin Farrell?s screenwriter Marty inadvertently becomes involved works devilishly well, on its level. Of course it rarely makes sense, but that?s the point. Ether jump into the rabbit hole, or don?t.

Marty, on the other hand, has no choice?not really. The successful cinema scribe is suffering a bout of writer?s block, and thus far only has the title for his next Technicolor opus: ?Seven Psychopaths.? Yet in the delirious amalgam of idealism and curiosity that comprises the author, he thinks maybe his film script lies in the dangers that soon befall.

Blame his best pal, Billy, a rather strange bird marvelously played by Sam Rockwell, on the tumultuous circumstances. Mysterious in motivation and more baffling than meets the eye, it?s when he and his partner in dognapping, Hans, filch a certifiably deranged gangster?s (Woody Harrelson) Shih Tzu that the insane fun house of derring-do ensues.

The casting of Christopher Walken as Hans assures the pedigree of writer-director McDonagh?s venture into the darker recesses of Filmdom. The whimsically shocking divulgences regarding his and Billy?s characters intersperse a style of attritional violence that consistently surprises. Time and again you assume, ?No, the director won?t dare.?

But he does, throwing caution to the wind with a gutsy nihilism that, while liberating in its vauntingly iconoclastic veer from the mainstream, nonetheless hints at an obscure, newfound altruism. As if in an aberrant contemporizing of a fable from the Brothers Grimm, McDonagh slyly suggests there is an answer here to something or other?maybe.

Cineastes and litt?rateurs fond of comparison will be kept busy. While readily a cross between Quentin Tarantino?s ?Pulp Fiction? (1994) and Martin Scorsese?s ?After Hours? (1985), it?s also easy to attribute some of auteur McDonagh?s style, conscious or not, to an ingratiating form Steinbeck so splendidly created, particularly in ?Sweet Thursday.?

It?s about anachronisms and the unlikely little societies that fringe characters form, a warm-the-cockles-of-your-heart optimism when in Steinbeck?s hands, perhaps borrowed from Damon Runyon. These characters make a big to-do out of nothing much, and then downplay or outright ignore that which most perplexes and agonizes us regular folks.

In McDonagh?s mitts, the mode finds a violent, seriocomic fold, thinking nothing of injecting several murders and inevitably rendering Marty and the audience the always startled, breathless observers. Then he brazenly counterpoises it with a nonchalance that borders on, well, the psychopathic. Meanwhile, the suspense builds and the tension rises.

Fleeing from the crazy killer hell-bent on retrieving the pup Billy refuses to relinquish, the troika takes it on the lam and extemporaneously pitches tents in the desert where they form their own writer?s retreat, a little Bread Loaf, if you will, only with guns. Hans and Billy feature themselves Marty?s literary collaborators, anxious to help with the script.

The action is inconsistent at times, complicated by the multiple layers of nuttiness being perpetrated. Yet the crew of eccentrics, especially the award-worthy Sam Rockwell as loose cannon Billy, always fetches us back to the zaniness. Colin Farrell is solid as the boozing, stereotypical wordsmith who becomes inextricably involved in the cataclysms.

Which brings us to Christopher Walken who, like John Malkovich, Dennis Hopper and John Lithgow, doubtless emigrated from a planet where sinister character actors are indigenous. Let loose here to do his staccato delivery without compunction, his eyes gazing at some unseen aura, he is a typecast delight. To tell any more would be a no-no.

Suffice it to note this is strange brew, the sort of off-the-beaten-track trip into film parts uncertain that recalls the confused little old guy exiting from one of Sandy Bates?s movies in Woody Allen?s ?Stardust Memories? (1980). A look of disbelief on his face, he asks, ?From this he makes a living?? and then offers, ?Me? I like a comedy? a drama.?

Call it a foray into a world we hope never to experience in real life. You exit the Bijou thanking your lucky stars to be a taxpaying bourgeois, fond of hearth and home and apple pie. Still, in many of us, whether we had a turtle soup interlude or not, there is a vicarious thrill waiting to be enjoyed, a sort of fine madness personified by ?Seven Psychopaths.?

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?Seven Psychopaths,? rated R, is a CBS Films release directed by Martin McDonagh and stars Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken. Running time: 110 minutes?

Source: http://www.willistonobserver.com/this-weeks-popcorn-seven-psychopaths-insanely-entertaining/

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Angels ship RHP Ervin Santana to Royals in trade

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) ? The Los Angeles Angels traded pitcher Ervin Santana to the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday for minor league left-hander Brandon Sisk.

The Angels exercised Santana's $13 million option for next season before sending the 2008 All-Star and $1 million to the Royals.

"We're proud to have him, and he certainly fits with what we're doing in 2013," Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore said.

Santana has been a fixture in Los Angeles' rotation since 2005, going 96-80 with a 4.33 ERA while starting at least 23 games in eight consecutive seasons. He has spent his entire career with the Angels, who signed him as a free agent in 2000 and nurtured his development into a solid starter of 96 games over the past three years.

But Santana struggled for much of last season, going 9-13 with a 5.16 ERA while giving up a major league-worst 39 homers despite significant improvements over the final two months.

"I have to realize that this is a business," Santana said, citing Kauffman Stadium as one of his favorite ballparks in the majors. "I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to be hard because I've known my teammates for a long time, but now I'm going to have new teammates. I can't wait to meet them in person and hang out."

Santana's woes and Dan Haren's similarly slow start were major factors in the Angels' midseason struggles, prompting them to make a trade for Zack Greinke and ultimately keeping them out of the playoffs for the third straight season.

"I don't have any physical problems," Santana said. "Everything was good. I just have bad luck. I was pitching good, and I didn't have the opportunity to win a lot of games."

With rising starter Garrett Richards already slated for the Angels' rotation in 2013 alongside ace Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson and hopefully Greinke, Santana has long realized he might be headed out of Orange County.

"Ervin had a lot of really great moments with the Angels, and has always been an Angel," said Los Angeles GM Jerry Dipoto, who just finished his first season with the club. "This is just the start of something new for Ervin, and we wish him well."

In their annual hunt for starting pitching, the Royals made a similar deal last November for Jonathan Sanchez, giving up Melky Cabrera for the San Francisco starter who was expected to anchor their rotation. But Sanchez was a complete flameout, going 1-6 with a 7.76 ERA in 12 starts before getting designated for assignment and eventually traded to Colorado.

Moore wasn't shy about dealing for Santana with just a year left on his contract, saying he hadn't discussed a long-term extension with the right-hander.

"We were able to scout Ervin during the entire year, specifically the second half," Moore said. "His August and September were really good. From a statistical standpoint, he was very good."

Santana, who will turn 30 in December, has shown moments of brilliance in his career, which includes three seasons with at least 16 victories and an All-Star selection. He threw a no-hitter in 2011 and a one-hitter last season, yet confounded the Angels with his inconsistencies in 2012.

"Ervin struggled out of the chute," Dipoto said. "I think his struggles were more relative to his command than his physical stuff. Once he determined that his issue was command, he throttled back his fastball a little bit and tried to gain command of his slider and pitched very well for us. To say Ervin's season was a failure would be unfair. Ervin's season was very uneven, and he took it down the stretch and gave us an opportunity to be in the race until the final week of the season."

The Angels are more interested in developing Richards and attempting to re-sign Greinke, who went 6-2 with a 3.53 ERA during his impressive but brief stint with Los Angeles.

The Angels haven't announced whether they'll pick up Haren's $15.5 million option for next season before Friday's deadline, and Dipoto gave no hints Wednesday. The club is thought to be shopping Haren, who had a career-worst 4.33 ERA and spent time on the disabled list for the first time.

Sisk spent last season with Triple-A Omaha, going 3-2 with a 2.54 ERA and eight saves. He's pitching in the Venezuelan winter league and has never pitched in the majors, but Dipoto is eager to see what the 27-year-old can do in spring training.

Los Angeles could use any bullpen help after a mostly dismal season.

"He's always had the deceptive ability to miss bats," Dipoto said. "He's done it at every minor league level, and hasn't had the opportunity to showcase it in the big leagues. We don't know if that's going to happen. Worst-case scenario is we're building much-needed depth and building toward creating a little bigger fishnet (in the minors)."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/angels-ship-rhp-ervin-santana-royals-trade-052618082--mlb.html

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Source: http://mysixstringsblog.com/beware-the-doubtful-web-hosting-firm/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beware-the-doubtful-web-hosting-firm

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Video: Cashin: Day Two of Trading

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/49641904/

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The Year of Motherhood: Discovering our City

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This post was written by contributor Jamie Ivey.

Not long after we moved to Austin I discovered a blog written by a mom in town that had made a list of all the things to do with your kids around Austin before they go off to kindergarten.? It was her own little mom/child bucket list for around town.? I mean the truth is that when my kids go off to school I lose about 40 hours a week with them that I would have normally had with them when they were not yet in school.? I remember being challenged to actually do the things in my city that people write about and encourage tourist to do.

It was then that I made my own little fun list of things I wanted to do with my kids and this month we were able to scratch some of those things off of our list.? It worked out perfectly for us to be on Fall Break this month, so I was able to do fun stuff with the kids during the day when most kids around us were still in school.? What I discovered was that my kids were eager to see new sights around our town as well.

This challenge forced me to get out of my mommy comfort zone and do new things with my kids.? If we are all honest, sometimes it?s just easier to do the things we always do with our kids, rather than trying new stuff.? This challenge forced me to think outside the box and not just go to our normal play ground on a day we have together, but yet find a new one to go to and explore something new.? We visited a museum that we had never been to, climbed a ?mountain?, and visited a new pumpkin patch that we had never been to.? This challenge was fun for me and also stressful (because I had to plan), but it was so much fun!? It?s a joy to see your kids experience something for the first time and have so much fun!

This month we focused on discovering our city, and next month is for serving our city.? I have always wanted our family to serve together, but each year I feel as though I have that one kid that will ruin it for us all.? I either have a child that?s too young, or one that will surely lose their mind and throw a massive fit during our time of serving.? This year I?m determined to serve our city somehow together as a family.? This shouldn?t be hard to find somehow to serve, but the hard part will be to make us actually do it.

I would love to hear from you about this!? How do you serve your city that you live in?? Do you volunteer as a family?? I need tips!? I want my children to love to serve, but sometimes I just don?t know how to do that well as a family.? Leave your comments HERE for me about this!

About Jamie
Jamie lives in Austin with her husband, Aaron, who is the worship pastor at The Austin Stone Community Church, and their four kids. She?s passionate about loving her husband, following Jesus, talking about adoption, and trying to be the best mom she can be to the four cutest kids in the world. She loves family nights, reading a good book, and could eat Mexican food three times a day. You can find her blogging at DreamingBigDreams.net, or on twitter @jamie_ivey.

Source: http://inspiredtoaction.com/2012/10/the-year-of-motherhood-discovering-our-city/

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China's Twitter-like Weibo poses danger, opportunity for new leaders

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As China prepares for a generational power shift in the next two weeks, a similar shift is happening online that is testing the limits and displaying the evolution of China's legions of state-directed censors.

Since its launch three years ago, Weibo, China's version of Twitter, has become the country's water cooler, a place where nearly 300 million Internet users opine on everything from Korean soap operas to China's latest political intrigue.

It has posed a unique challenge for Chinese Communist Party leaders whose overarching goal is to maintain tight political and social control, while at the same time wanting to give their citizens a conduit to blow off steam.

"One of the key challenges for the new leadership will be whether they can establish credibility through new governing mechanisms," said Tony Saich, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School in Massachusetts.

"How are they going to deal with a wired, globally connected, urban middle class that is probably less likely over time to be treated like children?"

Part of the solution is also the problem: Weibo.

Last Friday, senior officials from China's Jiangxi province triggered an avalanche of online criticism when they showed up hours late for a commercial flight from Guangzhou. The other passengers were convinced the plane was delayed simply to accommodate the officials, and they were furious.

Government censors let the online anger flow, and the incident was typical of the Weibo exposes that have often revealed details of low level officials' wealth, corruption or abuse of power.

Yet that same day, the New York Times ran a lengthy article on Premier Wen Jiabao family's wealth, which lit up Twitter internationally but hardly made it on to Weibo. All references to the article, direct and obscure, were quickly blocked.

By letting certain types of party criticism flourish on Weibo and even become "trending topics" while censoring even obscure references to others, Chinese authorities have tried to create an illusion of a rowdy online public square.

"Everything going on online, including Weibo, is not happening randomly. It is very much part of a plan," said a China-based American who goes by the alias Martin Johnson. Johnson founded Greatfire.org and Freeweibo.com, websites that monitor China Internet censorship.

"The reason why Weibo exists is because the party allowed it to. The party thinks it can use Weibo to its advantage."

CLOCKING THE WATCH

A microblogger who goes by the name Huazong has become the so called "watch watchdog" on Weibo. Since July 2011, he has collected photos of officials who wear expensive wristwatches despite earning relatively modest government salaries and posted them online.

Huazong's latest victim is a safety official from the northern Shaanxi province, Yang Dacai, who was removed from his position in September after Weibo users dug up photos and counted more than 10 luxury watches sitting on his wrist on different occasions.

"I have exposed dozens of officials' watches before and haven't gotten any direct threats," Huazong told Reuters TV.

"Some officials have asked why I am doing this and I tell them it is to promote the establishment of an officials' property declaration system," he said.

The freedom Weibo users have to excavate dirt on provincial and county-level officials stands in stark contrast to the muzzle they wear when wanting to discuss the nation's top leaders, whose names, nicknames and weird permutations of their names are blocked on the website.

"In China you can criticise and conduct investigative reports on officials who are lower than the county level, but you cannot criticise the top leaders," said Zhang Zhian, a journalism professor Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University.

Part of the reason for the dichotomy is rooted in the geography of power in China: edicts on what to censor are issued from the central government in Beijing. This means provincial officials have less say over what gets cut from China's boisterous Weibo.

"If a party secretary is criticized, it is hard for them to go all the way to Beijing and say ?please delete everything on Weibo about me'," said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley who founded news website China Digital Times that keeps an updated list of banned words on Weibo.

"If it is just local and does not implicate someone higher up...(the censors) often will let it go. On the other hand, they do make very swift judgments on information they see as challenging the legitimacy of the party," Xiao said.

The censorship, most analysts say, doesn't appear to bother the average Weibo user very much. Industry data has shown that the majority of users on the platform use it for entertainment and not for political or social activism.

"Do I think the Chinese are turned off by the censorship on Weibo? No," said Michael Clendenin, founder of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors. "The average Chinese person is not naive. They know what is happening and choose to participate."

ARE YOU READY FOR SPARTA?

Even though discussion of top political leaders and the taboo Ts - Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet - are removed from Weibo, debate about political issues exists in code on the platform, making China's Internet freer than before.

While references to the once-in-a-decade political transition, which begins on November 8, are strictly monitored, Internet surfers trying to elude government censors use code words, like "sparta", which has become shorthand for the upcoming Party Congress. Sparta in Mandarin, "si ba da", sounds like the colloquial reference to the 18th party congress, "shi ba da", which is censored on Weibo.

"My Internet speed is becoming slower and slower, is this because of the approaching 'sparta' or is it the end of the world," said one Weibo user. It is common for Beijing to increase Internet monitoring in the lead-up to marquee political events, experts said, often causing Internet speeds to slow significantly.

The continuous cat-and-mouse game, some Internet industry executives say, is actually vital to the stability and development of China, because it gives the Communist Party real-time feedback on policies and a method to take stock of the public mood.

"Social media cannot be said to be 'tightly controlled'," said one high-level Chinese Internet executive, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic. "It is infinitely more open than the Internet, which is infinitely more open than print media. 'Tightly controlled' may be used only if you are comparing against democratic countries."

When a significantly freer Internet in China will come about is anyone's guess, but most industry experts interviewed expect some loosening after the Party Congress.

That loosening, should it come, will be for an overtly political reason, analysts believe: at the outset of its tenure, the new leadership may want to project an image of being more open to political reform, including freer speech, than the old guard.

Weibo users, in turn, are certain to quickly test just how much freedom the new leadership is willing to tolerate.

(Additional reporting by Jiang Xihao and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-twitter-weibo-poses-danger-opportunity-leaders-210524873--sector.html

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