[Photo by JONATHAN RASHAD] AMR BASSIOUNY: Many people are either new or relatively inexperienced to violent protests, and considering what is happening these days, you might want to get close to the action and see what is happening or maybe even join the fighting yourself.  Before doing so, it’s essential to know how to do it right.  If you take it lightly, you could end up seriously injured, incapacitated or even dead. In this post I will go through how to prepare and protect yourself from attacks by the Central Security Forces (CSF) and the Military forces, as each uses […]

AP weighs in on the brutalization of OWS protesters across the country by police, quoting from former Seattle police chief Neil Stamper’s piece in The Nation about the militarization of the police in the wake of the War On Terror and The War On Drugs.

CTV: The Egyptian military has pledged to transfer power to a civilian government by July 1, 2012, The Associated Press is reporting. The move comes as tens of thousands of Egyptians joined a mass protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Tuesday to apply pressure on military leaders to step down and hand power to a civilian government. A military council has ruled Egypt since the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year. But many have grown impatient with the military rulers’ progress on reforms, which has prompted calls for a “second revolution” and brought thousands back into Tahrir Square […]

[Artwork by CHUNKYBEEFPAINTING] THE GUARDIAN: In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders. The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so […]

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Jimmy Fallon’s house band The Roots appear not to be fans of Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann. As Bachmann strode on to the stage for an appearance on Fallon’s “Late Night” early Tuesday, the show’s band played a snippet of a Fishbone song called “Lyin’ Ass Bitch.” The song begins with a distinctive “la la la la la la la la la” refrain — the only words audible before Bachmann, smiling and waving to the audience, sat down. The song itself, about a relationship gone wrong, isn’t political. MORE RELATED: ORIGIN OF SPECIES: How Michelle Bachmann Got […]

BY TONY ABRAHAM Anti-folk singer/songwriter Jeffrey Lewis has been beavering his way across the globe since the October release of his superbly idiosyncratic new album, A Turn in the Dream-Songs. Lewis’ music can appear bizarre and unsettling at first, but eventually his casually-voiced surrealistic ramblings suck you into his Technicolor comic book mind, where everything is animated and absurd, and nobody has thoughts, just thought bubbles. That is no coincidence, because Lewis doubles as a comic book artist, a visual storyteller, and a damn good one at that. He came up from the phantasmagorical mean streets of the Lower East […]

THE ATLANTIC: Congress is weighing a bill that would fundamentally change how the Internet works. It would affect even the most casual web user, who does no more than browse Facebook or watch YouTube videos or store photos on Flickr. Despite its importance, few people understand the legislation: It sounds complicated to outsiders. But don’t tune out! A quick primer is enough to grasp the high stakes, and there are two huge payoffs: 1) You can help save the Internet. 2) You can see beyond this specific bill’s flaws to the general error in thinking its supporters embrace. That’s important, […]

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo. PREVIOUSLY: It is well known that the Fleet Foxes look like lumberjacks and sing like angels, but less known is that live, they play like a band that made a deal with the devil at the crossroads. If you loved their 2008 self-titled LP but were a little underwhelmed by the new Helplessness Blues, you should have been at the Tower Theater on Saturday night, because those same songs blared loudly with the kind of heat, friction, and true grit sorely lacking on the recording. The moral of the story, […]

SALON: The story of Robert Kennedy’s assassination seems deceptively simple. After winning the California Democratic presidential primary on June 4, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy traversed a pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A young Palestinian Christian named Sirhan Sirhan pulled a gun and fired. Kennedy died roughly 25 hours later. Five others were wounded. Sirhan was tried and convicted. End of story, right? Not so fast. A crime is like a jigsaw puzzle. You can’t solve the puzzle by forcing a piece where it doesn’t belong. The theory that Sirhan killed Kennedy is an ill-fitting piece not supported […]

PAUL KRUGMAN:  To those defending Obama on the grounds that he’s saying what he has to politically, I have two answers. First, words matter — as people who rallied around Obama in the first place because of his eloquence should know. Yes, he has to make compromises on policy grounds — but that doesn’t mean he has to adopt the right’s rhetoric and arguments. The effect of his intellectual capitulation is that we now have only one side in the national argument. Second, since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for […]

FORBES: One year, six months, and three weeks after he was first jailed in a military brig in Kuwait, alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning will have his day in court: According to a blog post Monday from his lawyer David Coombs, the Army private first class will have a pre-trial hearing in Fort Meade, Maryland on December 16th, a day before his 24th birthday, to examine the government’s charges and evidence and determine whether to proceed with the case against him. MORE RELATED:  Supporters will be present outside Fort Meade when he arrives on December 16 and as part of […]