Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”
~Sydney J. Harris
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
~T.E. Lawrence (British Intelligence officer best known as Lawrence of Arabia (later changed his name to T.E. Shaw), 1888-1935)
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
~Bishop Desmond Tutu
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
~Albert Einstein
photo credit: Kid Libertine
News
May Day Coverage OWS
(as of 8PM Eastern 5.1.12)
8:30pm: The permitted march is over. Meet up at Battery Park!
7:30pm: The very front of the march now reaching #LibertySquare. The sidewalks are barricaded, but the park is open. Crowd estimates place size between 10,000 to 25,000.
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May Day Protests Across the Globe
Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe have taken to the streets to mark May Day, also known as International Workers' Day.
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OWS M1 Strike
Occupy Wall Street protesters took to New York’s streets Tuesday in the highlight of a plan to mount a “general strike” across the United States.
Small groups of protesters held simultaneous demonstrations outside a string of Manhattan corporate institutions including the Time-Life building and McGraw Hill publishers in the Rockefeller Center neighborhood.
Others were targeting Bank of America and HSBC branches, others Disney and The New York Times. “Prosecute the fraud” and “Jobs now,” read two protest placards.
Protests appeared to be peaceful, with few arrests, in contrast to previous Occupy events that have typically ended in scuffles and mass arrests on minor charges.
However, the disruption and potential for conflict was expected to heat up later in the day when activists staged a march through lower Manhattan to the Wall Street area.
cool video ...
Occupy artists take message to streets
1 May 2012 BBC Newsnight's Paul Mason meets the New York artists affiliated to the Occupy protests, including a team with their own mobile 'Bat-Signal'.
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ACLU: Admission of US Drone Strikes Does Nothing to Justify Program’s Legality
President Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, gave a speech in Washington on Monday in which he admitted publicly that the US does, in fact, carry out lethal drone airstrikes in foreign nations with which the United States is not at war. Despite that the drone program has long been an 'open secret,' it was the first formal, public admission made by the administration that the program exists.
Human rights groups, however, were not impressed, as Brennan argued that the clandestine program -- which has killed hundreds of innocent civilians over the last decade -- was "legal", "ethical" and "wise".
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UN says Syrian army still using heavy weapons
Syrian security forces have kept heavy weapons in cities in breach of a UN-brokered cessation of hostilities, but the government and opposition both have committed truce violations, a top UN official has said.
The 24 unarmed military observers now in Syria have seen Howitzer guns, armoured personnel carriers and other weaponry in cities, Herve Ladsous, the UN peacekeeping chief, told a press conference on Tuesday at UN headquarters.
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N.Y. State Assembly passes transgender rights bill
For the fifth time, the New York State Assembly has passed a bill enshrining non-discrimination rights for transgendered people in the state’s charter. According to Advocate.com, the bill must now move to the State Senate, where, so far, every such rights bill has failed to pass.
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Dont Mess With Texas Judges
Just hours after a federal court issued an injunction against Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s plan to revoke public funding for Planned Parenthood, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans knocked that ruling down and permitted the state to proceed — at least for now.
Judge Jerry Smith, appointed by President George W. Bush, granted the state’s request for an emergency stay. Democrats were quick to point out that it’s not the first time Smith has weighed in on partisan politics, having recently corrected some of the president’s rhetoric on the authority of the judiciary.
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Study: Atheists more driven by compassion than highly religious people
Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than atheists, agnostics and less religious people, according to a new study.
Research from University of California, Berkeley published in the most recent edition of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found a stronger link between compassion and generosity among non-religious or less religious people.
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Bike washed up in Canada may be from Japan tsunami
A motorcycle that washed ashore on Canada’s west coast may have drifted across the Pacific after being carried out to sea by last year’s devastating Japanese tsunami, Canada’s CBC television reported.
The Harley-Davidson, with Japanese plates from one of the hardest hit areas, was found on April 18 by beachcomber Peter Mark in acargo container on the Haida Gwaii islands off the coast of British Columbia, it said Monday.
“You just never know what you’re going to stumble upon when you go for a drive and, lo and behold, you just come across something that’s out of this world,” Mark, who was riding an all-terrain vehicle on the beach, told the news outlet.
The container also held new golf clubs, tools and camping equipment....
By Agence France-Presse, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:05 EDT
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Dead Birds Join Dolphins on Peruvian Beach
The mysterious maritime macabre continues in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of Peru. First, hundreds of dolphins began washing up on the beaches in the state of Lambayeque. Now, in the same area, hundreds of seabirds are joining the marine massacre.
More than 1,200 birds, including 538 pelicans, have been found on the beaches, reported TV Peru. Local fishermen report the deaths started about two weeks ago.
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