Readings

Student Occupiers: It’s the Debt, Stupid

I was one of those kids who always pushed hard and dreamed big. I skipped a grade, was in all the right AP classes, one of 2 or 3 black student on the honor roll, and went out of state for college @ 17 and had no doubts I would make it in life. I used the government and Sallie Mae to make it through grad school within 6 years, and expected to be somewhere way different than where I am now…..

I am 25 now and living back @ home. With a different phone number to avoid all of the harrassing phone calls asking me to pay back $1400 a month I just don’t have.

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Source : Mother Jones

Prof David Harvey defends public education, right to protest

It is therefore tragic to see rights of association, assembly and protest, rights guaranteed by the Constitution, trampled upon by policies formulated within the CUNY system that seem designed to deny the right to protest and to restrict the possibility for open and and pacific dialogue.

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Source : Occupycunynews

Quote of the week

The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose project should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers. -Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Military thinktank urges US to cut oil use

It deploys strong language to describe the consequences of this dependence. “Our reliance on this single commodity makes us vulnerable … We are held hostage to price fixing by a cartel that includes actors who would do our nation harm, and we are too often called upon to risk the lives of our sons and daughters to protect fragile oil supplies form this very cartel,” the report says.

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Source : The guardian

Greenhouse gases rise by record amount

But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8% below 1990 levels. The US did not ratify the agreement.

In 1990, developed countries produced about 60% of the world’s greenhouse gases, now it’s probably less than 50%, Reilly said.

“We really need to get the developing world because if we don’t, the problem is going to be running away from us,” Weaver said. “And the problem is pretty close from running away from us.”

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Source : The Guardian

Capitalism vs. the Climate

A 2007 Harris poll found that 71 percent of Americans believed that the continued burning of fossil fuels would cause the climate to change. By 2009 the figure had dropped to 51 percent. In June 2011 the number of Americans who agreed was down to 44 percent —well under half the population.

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Source : The Nation

Quote of the week

“It is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.”
– Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Photo-Realistic Tokyo Model Braces a Highrise Dream

“This means putting all urban eggs in one “super high-rise” basket (offices at the top so that executives can feel powerful, residences below for proximity to green space).”

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Source : Polis

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

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