Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

First, i'd like to note that i am aware that $65 for a parking ticket is already a major bargain discount in New York City. But i was with an experienced New Yorker, we looked forever for a spot, and it was a clearly labeled "not during street sweeper hours" area, not a no-parking-daytimes as the ticket claims.

i can't figure out how to challenge the ticket. # 794463522-6 - and license is 4925KS
can find the ticket via nyc.gov/finance but not how to dispute it
i can pay it online, though the reduction in my respect for the NYC government may be dangerous for both them and me

Catch 22: If your e-mail inbox is not acting as your TODO stack, it would not matter that it has 87 e-mails in it. But if it weren't acting as your TODO list, it wouldn't have 87 e-mails in it.

The subject should be halfway between being part of what you're doing and "i'm with an organization you should know about"- but my organization is a bare shell now (not even a web presence, and i'm a web developer).

I'm at NCMR and just saw you on the panel, excellent, thank you. I think i have something to offer in your goal to see everyone on the planet connected: how to make it scale.

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2011/04/and-now-some-good-news.html

[very disorganized and the tangents need to be re-planted elsewhere but there's good stuff here]

An unabashed Milton Friedman acolyte made the point (a quotation?) that as long as exchanges are freely made between people, the net benefit has to be positive by definition.

Yes-- exactly-- but-- and there is a huge but-- there's little practical difference between a force-coerced exchange and an economic-coerced exchange. Indeed, it's the history and present of inequality to use force to back up the imposition of economic injustice.

Mazin Qumsiyeh on Palestinian Resistance

Jesus as first martyr of Palestinian resistance,

[note: that is *not* a good early/opening line for Jews in attendance, as a fair number will have at some point been treated as personally

because of course he non-violently resisted.

since the advent of the political zionist idea

all Germanic-speaking people

sent two rabbis to palestine

"the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man"

Jewish colonization project

as Herzl put it, "we need to spirit them out"

but it mostly happened 1947-1949

[Note: Every Indian word is misspelled]

Rape is placed as the one crime that is perpetrated against woman, and all the other crimes and mistreatment swept under the rug.

[first woman she was talking about, mentioned repeatedly, never caught the name enough to write it down]

She is completely uncompromising in woman having their full rights

Very radical thing in India, against arranged marriage

Movement against marriage as an institution entirely

sexual harassment in the workplace, she has brought

Duplicity: Twitter squawker JHGoldgarten demands pro-Palestinian activists such as
Ali Abunimah denounce the murder of Israeli children in a settlement-- when groups that do threaten violence already have.

The militant wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah have all denied involvement in the murders, with the Al-Aqsa Brigades saying Monday in a statement that they "oppose the targeting of civilians and killing of children no matter what the pretext may be."

http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=368554

http://libcom.org/news/housing-activist-found-dead-warsaw-08032011

never quite sure who any anyone is that i may or may not have met before

fortunately many other people are better and kindly recognize me first

and so starts DrupalCon!

UPDATE: Notes from the talk and discussion (which was fantastic, unfortunately the notes are scattered).

If you are within traveling distance of Boston, do not miss Kaveri Rajaraman Indira gracing us again with her awesomeness and reports from movements for justice throughout India. It is FREE and there is FOOD (and if you don't have Boston Celtics tickets to see Anjali Forber-Pratt honored as a hero among the crowd, you have no excuse for not showing up).

Time
04 March · 18:00 - 21:00
Location
Encuentro 5 in Boston
Created by:

Wisconsin IWW calls for a general strike.

I think more often where we need to start, given what we have to work with, is a targeted strike.

Instead of bringing the entire economy to a hold, how can we disproportionately reduce the revenue and profits of our most reactionary opponents?

We prefer organizer, because it implies effective action, doing work over the long haul, while activist has negative connotations in the sense of ineffective or sporadic action.

But everyone can't be an organizer, or not only an organizer, and some people clearly take action.

Used "amazing community activist, organizer, hope-for-humanity" for Kaveri.

Guess that works.

TODO: Link to Kasey's wonderful organizer and activist relationship essay (both are needed).

Now the fight moves on to the Senate. After blocking its passage last week, the House voted to extend the PATRIOT Act last night -- but we can still win this in the Senate.

Thank you, to those who have already donated to help us get our ad on TV. It is ready to be aired in Washington, DC -- but we still need help.

If you haven't had a chance to donate yet, would you click here to view the ad, and consider chipping in $10 to help us get it on TV? Every $50 we raise will let us air it one additional time.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/14/journalism/...

I'm sure all these people are much better off than the median American, but this is an honorable, principled action, period. Whatever their ideological reasons, they are throwing in their lot with the people, and this should be respected.

Editors love it when they get complaints from both parties. They say it proves they aren’t biased one way or the other. But it just as easily could prove they’re doing such a lousy job that everyone is appalled.

Now it appears the self-anointed tribunals of truth can’t even recognize political bias when they are immersed in it. We don’t know who discovered water, but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.

http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-13809-truth-o-meter-crash.html

Stephen Zunes lays it out well: Why Egypt Will Not Be Another Iran

Nothing more powerful than being part of a movement @ghonim shows us when freed after Egyptian state kidnapping. Watch: http://lb.cm/ZLW

Some takeaways from Wael Ghonim's post-release interview http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/subtitled-video-of-wael-ghon...

The people putting in the work to organize the protests that Mubarak must go:

• planned for non-violence
• planned for doing no property damage
• planned for cleaning up trash in the areas they occupied

They tried to plan for no one getting hurt, too.

Twitter e-mails me when someone follows me, yet sometimes my number of followers will go up without my getting any notification. Does Twitter do fuzzy math? Is there a secret follow option? Is it all just make believe? I don't care as much as this post would make you think.