(via bijan)
My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.
(Source: myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com)
If you’re still using Quicksilver or even (gasp) Google Quick Search Box for your trigger-happy computing, take note: It’s time to move to Alfred.
It’s also worth noting that Quicksilver development has, once again, started back up. I’m still sold on the switch to Alfred, though, and happy with the current momentum.
I’m curious but incredibly conflicted. Quicksilver is OSX in my mind…though this looks pretty spectacular at first glance.
dvdp:
Complete time-lapse video of the Sun, spanning the entire months of September, October and November 2011 as seen through the SWAP ultraviolet instrument onboard the European Space Agency spacecraft Proba-2.
(via itsfullofstars)
Model wearing a winter coat and argyle socks, 1950s.
Nobody’s worried about the creep in the background who’s clearly planning to murder this poor woman?
[video]
There are too many good cops out there to let goons like this keep their jobs.
Also, the offending officer in that pictures name is Lt. John Pike and his boss’s phone number is (530) 752-3113.
UC Davis police officer pepper sprays sitting students because, well, just because.
Think that’s %$#ing horrible? The video’s worse.
Via John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:
I’m sorry, this has gone too far. This has happened in police department after police department, and it has gone too far. Our police look like the goons in Russia and China. Please watch this video and send it to everyone you know. This has gone too far.
Occupy Wall Street is a really important moment for our country if for no other reason than it serves as a litmus test for how we’re doing as an open, just, and democratic society. And I’m sad to say the test results are not great.
(Source: uncleclark, via motherjones)