They [police] represent those who have ruled this country since 9/11 in the name of our safety and security, while they made themselves, and no one else, safe and secure.  It is an order that has based itself on kidnapping, torture, secret prisons, illegal surveillance, assassination, permanent war, militarized solutions to every problem under the sun, its own set of failed occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the closest of relations with a series of crony capitalist corporations intent on making money off anyone’s suffering as long as the going is good.

Wow, Rebecca Solnit's (correction) Tom Engelhardt's words leading into Rebecca Solnit's piece are haunting and powerful, but more than anything scary and sad. As someone who has attended/organized/participated in many dozens of protests and demonstrations, I'm aghast at the overwhelming use of force to silence people. Yes, I know that Occupy Wall Street folks were breaking park rules by camping, but I cannot believe that in civil society we cannot find a better tool than pepper spray and billy clubs to resolve conflict.

The rest of Rebecca's post in TomDispatch is worth reading.

Is there any reason to oppose the mosque that isn't bigoted, or demagogic, or unconstitutional?" asks Michael Kinsley. "None that I've heard or read.

Salon magazine did a good piece on the Park51 controversy discussing the holes of the arguments against the cultural center. As someone who lived 1 block east of the World Trade Center site for 8 years I can't stand people spitting venom at my neighborhood. Why don't you let those people who live down there deal with their own lives. We don't need you speaking up for us, thank you very much. It is paternalistic, bigoted, offensive, and downright un-American.

I think that Frank Rich's op-ed of how the fight against the cultural center is a fight against America's wars in the middle east. It's worth a read, too.

Hateful Ground Zero Hypocrisy

by Peter Beinart

The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart gives a stinging critique of the Anti-Defamation League's stance on building a mosque near Ground Zero.

This, like many of the articles I've seen neglected to mention one constituent group - what about all of the Muslim victims of 9/11? The mosque could certainly serve their needs. What about all of the Muslim families in lower Manhattan? I lived in lower Manhattan for 8 years, and there are churches, mosques, synagogues galore. One more just seems like a service to me.

I came across SchoolTVmadeEasy.com when looking for resources for my school's budding TV news production team. It's very useful if you use Adobe Visual Communicator as your software platform, and fairly useful even if you use a different solution.

Meatless Mondays, a movement that has legs

In more-positive news more people are taking on Meatless Mondays, including celebrity chef Mario Batali! Now if they only realized that it really needs to be plant-based Mondays. Other animal proteins are just as bad as meat!