We are moving from the few and big to the small and many

At Orion Magazine, Bill McKibben has noted a trend in energy production, information, health care, banking and (believe it or not) farming:

[W]e’re moving, if we’re lucky, from the world of few and big to the world of small and many. We’ll either head there purposefully or we’ll be dragged kicking, but we’ve reached one of those moments when tides reverse.
This movement to the small and many is a democratic movement, and McKibben's comment about the "tides revering" refers to the fact that "small and many" will be resisted by those who can profit by confiscating and retaining large-scale control:
In our world, most of those people are not actually persons—we call them corporations. But their power over our democracy is very real, and on the farm and on the trading floor and in the hospital ward they’re doing their very best to block the transitions we need. Their money, earned under the old bigger-is-better paradigm, gives them great power to block change: just look at how skillfully the fossil fuel industry has used the Tea Party to stifle legislation that would speed the transition to renewable energy. Watch Big Ag write the next Farm Bill—it won’t be pretty.

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UC Davis Chancellor Katehi makes her silent exit

One of the comments at this youtube video says it all: "Of course it was peaceful. The ones causing violence were not there: the cops." The story is here. More and more, we are seeing a militarization of urban police forces--America's military weapons and tactics turned toward her own people who are exercising their First Amendment rights.

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A new Declaration for America: to wake up from its delusions

With the help of a DI reader who wishes to remain anonymous, I have created the following Declaration for modern Americans to wake up from their delusions. I'd recommend that all adults and school children put their hands over their hearts in the morning and say the following instead of pledging allegiance to the powers-that-be (but see here for an alternate form of the Pledge).

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Legal observer of Occupy protest gets in the fray

From Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, a discussion with Karen Smith, a retired judge who had served on the New York Supreme Court:

JUDGE KAREN SMITH (ret.): I was wearing—and I brought this—a hat, which says the "National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer." And as you can see, in color, it’s quite bright. And at night— AMY GOODMAN: It’s fluorescent green. JUDGE KAREN SMITH (ret.): It’s fluorescent green. And then I was wearing it, and I had a pad and a pen, and I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested so we could follow them through the system and just observe what was going on. And as I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, "I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK." And he said, "Move on, lady." And he kept pushing—they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she said—and she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head. And I walk over, and I say, "Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that." And he said, "Lady, do you want to get arrested?" And I said, "Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer." He said, "You want to get arrested?" And he pushed me up against the wall.

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