Wisconsin: Capitol Camp-Out Continues

Madison protesters allowed by police to stay overnight

JSOnline Feb. 27, 2011

By Bill Glauber of the Journal Sentinel

Faced with several hundred drum-beating, dancing and chanting demonstrators who refused to leave the state Capitol after the doors were shut at 4 p.m. Sunday, police decided to let the crowd spend the night and continue the protest against Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill.

"The people who are in the building will be allowed to stay," Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs said Sunday night. "There will be no arrests unless people violate the law."

It was unclear how long the protesters might be able to maintain their nightly vigil. The policy will be reviewed, Tubbs said.

The state's Department of Administration had sought to bring a sense of business-as-usual to the Capitol by establishing regular hours.

Officials said they were trying to clean the building after nearly two weeks of continuous protests.

Tubbs announced the decision to let the protesters stay after he saw how they moved aside while work crews went about cleaning the Capitol, including mopping and polishing floors.

"People are very cooperative," Tubbs said. "I appreciate that."

It was yet another surreal moment in the continuing saga of political chaos at the Capitol.

"We delivered a message to Gov. Walker. We'll continue to be here to kill this bill," said Peter Rickman, 28, of Neenah, during a news conference held shortly before the doors shut.

Protesters said they were prepared to be peacefully arrested to make their point that the Capitol should remain open.



UPDATE:

The agency outlined rules for Monday:

* Visitors to the Capitol will enter only at the King St. entrance.

* Visitors will be admitted to meet with legislators and other officials, to attend committee hearings and to observe the state Assembly and Senate if they are in session.

* Protesters will be allowed in the building, but crowd size will be adjusted to accommodate the cleaning crews, the preparation for Tuesday's joint legislative session and the number of protesters who remained in the building.

* Police will continue the practice, begun on Saturday, of disallowing sleeping bags, blankets and animals (other than service animals) into the building.

Where the wild things are: Culinary delights in insects and plants

By G: 2-25-2011

Our ancesters here on planet Earth, it is said, existed as hunter gatherers and foragers, enjoying such enjoying such delacies as fruit, nuts, eggs, shellfish, and whatever protein they could glean. It wasn't until around 10,000 years ago that grain was cultivated which produced an agricultural society, which spread to most parts of the old planet.

Some of the ancient sources of food would have been crayfish, crabs, and other crustecians, not to mention lobster, It's an expensive delicacy today that is being over harvested, and will eventually follow the abolone, which is almost exclusively grown artificially in sea farms.

That being said, I guess that the lowly insect can be mentioned as a probable source of food in ancient times and as an important source of protein in our near future. So along with learning about our native edible plants, it will probably be a good idea to learn the identification and preparation of our native insect species.

This from http://www.sustainablefootprint.org/:

"As early as 1885, the British entomologist Vincent M. Holt wrote a booklet with the title: "Why not eat insects?" It is a good question, as most of the world population does. More than 1000 insect species are eaten in the tropics, including caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, termites, ants, bees, wasps, and true bugs. This is probably because insects in warmer climates are bigger and show more crowding behaviour than in temperate zones, making harvesting from nature easier. It is an erroneous Western assumption that people in the tropics eat insects because they are starving. To the contrary, an insect snack is often considered a delicacy."

It's not like we aren't already eating insects in our prepared foods, especially when they are canned or frozen. The FDA allows more in our food than we think.
According to the NY Times tomato paste and pizza sauces are allowed a densety of 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it. So, even if your just a beer drinker, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice.

I don't know about you, but natural sources of protein look a lot better than factory food.

Food Inc. part 1

Wisconsin assembly approves budget repair bill

After rushed procedure, vote, Democrats shout ‘shame!’ at leaving Republican members

Badger Herald
Thursday, February 24, 2011 11:59 p.m.
Updated Friday, February 25, 2011 1:59:55 a.m.

by Andrew Averill

Republicans resorted to a surprise vote at 1:09 a.m. Friday morning to pass the governor’s controversial budget repair bill as Democrats leapt out of their chairs shouting “Shame! Shame!” at the exiting representatives.

Republicans had attempted the quick vote at least two other times earlier in the night, but Democrats, under the vocal leadership of Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, protested and demanded the speaker renounce the votes. The move came after around 61 hours of debate had taken place, largely due to Democrats taking liberty with the length of their speeches. The final count of the vote was 51-17.

Gov. Scott Walker introduced the bill two weeks ago today to address the $137 million budget shortfall. It contained provisions that would provide more executive control over medical assistance, increase state worker contributions to their pensions and health care premiums and severely limit public union members’ rights to collectively bargain.

Union leadership protesting around the Capitol and observing the rallies from across the state over the past two weeks have said they would accept the budget bill provision requiring them to pay more toward pensions and health care premiums, but would not accept losing collective bargaining rights for work conditions and benefits.

“Unions agreed to pay. It’s obvious this isn’t about money. This is about union busting plain and simple,” Rep. Christina Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, said.

More

Wisconsin: Union blood is stronger than a weak end patriots tea

                    DOUBLE FEATURE TODAY

                              WITH CARTOON

couldn't be my fault that the video don't play, must be Youtube

Union blood is stronger than tea, but the corporate masters believe that if a Tea Bagger carries a gun, he is a patriot. If a Union supporter carries a sign, he is a Socialist.

Is there really any reason that the so called, Tea Party Patriots should be concerned about what is happening in Wisconsin? Well, maybe if they are local, but most of them are being bussed in by such organisations as Freedom Works, which is a cooperative of Dick's Army and Gland Beck.

~o~

Here's an exerpt from Therearenosunglasses Weblog

It’s happening in Wisconsin. Its Labor–vs- anti-labor. It’s Ronald Reagan–vs- Mondale…It is the basic right to organize to defend one’s rights and to improve working conditions–vs- the corporations and their mobs for hire, like the Tea Party gang, or whatever they are called. It may be true that much of the anti-union opposition is real (the “unions have killed this country” crowd), but, I would think that many of them are there because someone with either money or power asked them to attend. Believe it or not, people, it is a fight between corporations and the rest of us. If you are not a paid part of some corporation, then you are part of the general population being targeted for some great rip-off. Unions and the fights for workers’ rights (which they have waged for all of us, down through the decades), are the reason that you cannot be worked like an abused animal, and your children cannot be forced to labor hard hours at dangerous jobs, whenever you can no longer work, or find work….and believe me, that day is just around the corner.

The rest of the story on No sun glasses excellent weblog.

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Tribal Nature vs Orwellian Reality

Dog Street Journal


Tom Shadyac visits the Kimball Theatre
Nov. 11, 2010 | By Morgan Barker , DSJ Style Editor

Tom Shadyac is a well know Hollywood director with films under his belt including: “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”, “Liar Liar”, “The Nutty Professor”, and “Bruce Almighty”. He also wrote the screenplays for “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “The Nutty Professor”. Shadyac is known for his comic genius and jumpstarting Jim Carrey’s career, but recently his switched to a more serious tone.

Shadyac describes his turn to the serious as the result of a biking accident; this accident left him with post-concussion syndrome. Many people with post-concussion syndrome experience depression. Shadyac says he was ready for death but felt he had another story to tell. He asks, “What did I want to say before I died?” Enter “I am.”

“I am” is Shadyac’s first venture into the documentary film business, and I feel he has a hit. The documentary tells Shadyac’s story but changes course and begins to tell the story of what is wrong with the world. After Shadyac’s accident he identified himself as personifying many of the problems with the world. So he traded his mansion in Hollywood, private plane and massive film crew for a trailer and a four-man crew. He traveled all over to answer the questions “What’s wrong with our world?” and “What can we do about it?”

To answer these questions he visits spiritual leaders, scientists, poets, writers, and even his father (founder of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital). Shadyac finds that the main things wrong with the world are consumerism and competition. He interviews many people who say that Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest, ideas that we seem to be living by, is not a natural state for human beings. Instead, the natural state for humans to live in is a society that thrives on love and compassion. These aren’t particularly new ideas. They appear in the Sunday school lessons you attended as a child, the morals your parents and teachers taught you, and even in the lyrics of the Beatles, “All you need is love.” While we’ve heard these ideas, we rarely practice them in real life. The documentary sets out to remind us of these things and encourage us to practice them in life.

Shadyac gives an anecdote about a tribe that worked together in a cooperative society, each day the hunters went out and every night they returned with meat to feed the entire village, even the sick and elderly. One day a hunter declared himself to be the best and stated that it was unfair of him to have to share his meat with the town. So he went on top of a mountain and stored his meat and lived alone while others starved. Others gradually followed suit and eventually the society was consumed by greed. He finishes by pointing out that this tribe is us.

More about Tom Shadyac at iamthedoc.com

A Democratic Egypt? Look at what happened in Iraq

Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

Wednesday, October 27, 2004
by Greg Palast

Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush administration's grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy."

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges -- in fact, "ALL state enterprises" to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example:This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance -- or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that -- even if we didn't go in for the oil -- we certainly won't leave without it.

gregpalast.com

Chris Hedges: US & Israel should change policies in Middle East

Chris Hedges, standing to the right of Daniel Ellsberg at the demonstration that didn't happen. Probably the most important news in recent times, because it  involved people, who were once in government, the CIA, and the media. They were here at the White House to give us a message and it was not to be found in the main stream media, not even in the NY Times, where Hedges was once the Middle East bureau chief. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism, and was a  foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

This was reported in OpEdNews

Dec 16, 2010 ... Today, 131 rebels were arrested for civil disobedience at the snow covered ... Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Margaret Flowers, Coleen Rowley.

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt



truthdig Posted on Jan 30, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.

Read the whole article at truthdig