Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Naturally. Or unnaturally. Take your pick.

(and, of course, a continuation of brutal repression of one brave person.)

Tweets also compiled and posted on Facebook:

Our desperately fearful government seeks to pile more punishment on a brave truthteller. Hit the streets. http://www.popularresistance.org/dc-activists-call-emergency-protest-for...

Bradley Manning exposed war crimes – US military murders of reporters and first responders in Iraq – and faces a life sentence today.

http://occupythepipeline.com/our-credo/

Occupy The Pipeline is a grass-roots, not-for-profit environmental working group that was founded in the spring of 2012 to oppose the construction of the Spectra Pipeline through non-violent direct action and civil disobedience. Though the group was formed in response to a single pipeline, we are opposed to all such infrastructure and we regard all fossil fuel pipelines as a direct threat to the prospect of a sustainable future on a habitable planet.

Many, many friends shared an article on the completely unreputable Daily Mail (UK) web site

"In shock and sad and angry over a horrible mass-murder attack that just happened very near you or people you know and love personally? Let's share an a

The internet archive

http://web.archive.org/web/20110203163701/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Key word

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/02/afghanistan.lukeharding

*yes*, tragedy plays into the hands of governments seeking more power

We Should Be Allowed to Unlock All Our Stuff - http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03/you-dont-own-your-cellphones-or-you... See also https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

http://aaronwinborn.com/node/238

Via Kara Andrade:

Honduras police accused of death squad killings
By Alberto Arce

"Police have long been accused of operating more like assassins than law enforcement officers in Honduras, but few cases ever have been investigated. In the past year, police were alleged to have been involved in the deaths of a prominent Honduran radio journalist and the son of a former police chief - but neither killing has been solved."

from Kanawha county.

Businessman facing home foreclosure commits suicide
http://www.dailymail.com/News/Kanawha/201303070085

Sponsor’s death shocks Little League community
http://www.dailymail.com/News/201303120287

if our media understood or allowed themselves to see context, this would be used to talk about the need for economic justice and institutional compassion for a solid week at minimum.

Originally via badly titled http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/elderly_man_facing_foreclosu...

I arrived after all the action was over, but here's some very low-quality pictures of police officers standing around in riot gear.

https://mlncn.trovebox.com/photos/album-2/list

Some context, the violent police response to people protesting against police violence, the night before:
http://rt.com/usa/police-flood-brooklyn-neighborhood-238/

Cory Doctorow has a talk on the need to give people rights over the technology they use, not only own. Worth reading of course, and i'm not going to sumarize,

A couple thoughts. First, please can we acknoweledge that the root of many of his concerns is the extreme, unfair inequality we have, and we have to at least mention the need to do something about that, because we will never be able to compensate for this tortured landscape working from this tortured landscape.

The world didn't end today, but no Mayan ever (ever) said that it would. As Daniel Feder wrote: "Actual Mayans had other plans for today.... 6,000 EZLN members marching in complete silence into five Chiapas cities, in an action organized in secret that took the country by surprise."

Photo by Raul Vera. Marcha Zapatista, Ocosingo, Chiapas.

More detail from Narco News:

My girlfriend went to sleep so you all in the general world will have the remainder of my post-election musings foisted upon you.

Together, we told Congress to act. They listened. Thanks in large part to you and the other soon-to-be investors that signed our petition, crowd investing has been legalized. Starting in January 2013, everyone will have the opportunity to invest in startups they believe in.

http://wefunder.wefunder.com

Any of us who purport to do journalism need to focus on what matters. Instead there is a focus on what is easy to say. Something wrong or meaningless or both, but it fits into the story that has already been told. Al Gore as exaggerator. (Not more than any other politician, especially not for the usual claims against him.) Dan Quayle as dumb.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/09/business/all-villagesoup-publicati...

Disclosure: Richard Anderson was a fellow winner of the Knight News Challenge (for rather a great deal more money).

This article caught my particular attention because i had met the owner in the context of his project to open source Village Soup's "successful community news software, combining professional journalism, blogs, citizen journalism, online advertising and 'reverse publishing' from online to print."

[If someone makes us think seriously about central Africa, how cannot that be solely a good thing?]

i was avoiding this debate but conversation with my mother spilled onto Facebook.

http://keepittrill.com/online/2012/03/kony-2012-scam-stop-supporting-inv...
Via Carlitos Eliana Laguna via Favianna Rodriguez

Richard Stallman, for explaining in the section on choice of caffeineited beverages if he is tired: "I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is an international boycott of the Coca Cola company for killing union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala; see killercoke.org.

- https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/201...

[he purchased 500,000 shares in 2010 valued at $23M]

As much as i've complained about Microsoft software and explained how an operating system monopoly perpetuates based not on quality, but on interlocking lock-ins, i wanted to believe and have said that if anyone is going to have billions of dollars and so an unreasonably larger amount of power and control, William Henry Gates III doesn't seem so bad a person to have it.

Australia has "refused to accept trade rules that allow foreign investors to sue governments in international tribunals. Known as “investor-state” dispute settlement, these rules are in every U.S. trade agreement negotiated in the past 20 years – except the 2005 U.S.-Australia pact."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/02-0

by Sarah Anderson

On the song Tainted Love-- "have you heard the original?"

1964. Obviously heavily motown influenced. Gloria Jones. The single was a flop. More than ten years later some djs in the UK discovered it and started playing the hell out of it. She rerecorded a new version in the 1970s that's not nearly as good. Obviously Soft Cell's version is the biggest hit.