noted. 08/19/2011

• S. Brian Willson

  tags: ocproc brianwillson activism veterans

• Ryan Francesconi

  tags: friends music ocproc

• Brian Willson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • S. Brian Willson (born July 4, 1941) is a prominent American anti-war activist.

     

    Willson served in the US Air Force from 1966 to 1970, including several months as a combat security officer in Vietnam. He left the Air Force as a Captain. He subsequently became a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace (Humboldt Bay Chapter 56, California). Upon completion of Law School at American University in Washington, D.C., he became a member of the District of Columbia Bar. Willson has had a variety of jobs including penal consultant, prisoner rights advocate, dairy farmer, legislative aide, town tax assessor and building inspector, veteran's advocate, and small businessman.

     

    As a trained lawyer and writer, he has documented U.S. policy in nearly two dozen countries. Since 1986, Willson has studied on-site policies in a number of countries, among them Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, Israel (and Palestinian territories), Japan, and Korea, both North and South. Documenting the pattern of policies that he says "violate U.S. Constitutional and international laws prohibiting aggression and war crimes," Willson has been an educator and activist, teaching about the dangers of these policies. He has participated in lengthy fasts, actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, and tax refusal along with voluntary simplicity.

• Perceptions of Inequality in the U.S. » Sociological Images

  tags: inequality

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    • warren buffett - everybody in this country owes their good fortune to the rest of the country

• Penn Jillette knows Dick | The Beast

  • Can government do shitty things? Oh yeah. Can it build damns, wind farms, roads, etc. by taxing the wealthy and give people jobs in the process — in turn giving the newly-employed money to buy more junk from the rich? Of course. Sorry to go off on a rant here, but these sort of “free market” worshiping, Ayn Rand atheists give all atheists a bad name.

     

    The reason most people self-indentify as atheist is because they’ve evaluated the profound lack of evidence for a supernatural deity and they’ve reach the safe conclusion that there is no God. We’re supposed to value reason and empirical evidence. And Jillette is considered — I have no fucking clue why — something of an atheist champion. Well, until you “work hard” to clear up your ignorance problem, we don’t fucking want you! I don’t, anyway. In my opinion, you should shut the fuck up before Burns Strider at the American Values Network makes you into the anti-libertarian poster-boy by conflating your economic ignorance with your reasonable atheism, like he did with Ayn Rand.

     

  • On the off chance you’re reading this (or having Teller read it for you), I’ve done some of the hard work for you: I Googled “Scandinavia”. You’ll appreciate that Scandinavian countries are the least religious societies on earth. They don’t go in for bullshit, as you might say. The same holds true for their economic systems. Their wealthiest citizens pay 50% and even 60% of their income in taxes. This money is used for social programs. It’s the reason they’ve done so well during the global recession. Better than Europe. Way better than the U.S. (where the 400 richest people have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million combined). It’s also why they consistently rank among the happiest countries with the highest standard of living. Read something, you asshole!

     

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