This is a twitter based map on the daily demonstrations in Montreal by the Quebec Student Movement. They are getting their exercise! So far 9 miles tonight.

This map does a good job of showing the types of countries that use the death penalty and those that don't.

350.org just released this image counter that tracks how much the government is subsidizing fossil fuels. I am not sure if this amount is just the federal government or if it includes the states as well.

This doesn't include subsidies for other forms of dirty energy including biomass incinerators, landfill gas, trash incinerators, and other incinerators (tire, poultry waste, etc).

Date: Nov 30th, 1999.
Location: Notre Dame, Indiana.

I had heard rumors of a big mobilization for the anti-WTO protest in Seattle, but I had ignored them and Seattle was very far from Notre Dame (and I was cheap). Also I was trying to complete my course work on time (ahem!). However for the first time I could follow everything online with Seattle Indymedia's radio station!

The Quebec Student General Strike is now in its 13th week as students oppose proposed dramatic increases in tuition. Quebec students have the lowest tuition in Canada and also have the most active and radical student movement. Today the conservative Quebec government just announced that it was closing the colleges and universities on strike until August as negotiations with the students were unsuccessful.

You can follow the demonstrations in Montreal on
CUTV on LiveStream

The National Broadband Map has some neat maps. For instance the speed test one shows that real speeds are slower than advertised ones in my area (but surprisingly in some areas they are actually slower than real speed).

As the Occupy Movement is re-examining the role of the General Assembly it is important to ask what kind of democracy do we want in our movements?

Up until now the Occupy Movement has used General Assemblies as a primary method for making main decisions. While General Assemblies can make movements more democratic it is a misconception that they are examples of participatory democracy. In fact they largely follow the representative democracy model (and representative and participatory democracy aren't always as far away from each other as people think).

This is a pretty amazing high resolution map of the French 2012 Presidential Election results

I founded the Notre Dame Progressive Student Alliance in 1998.

For the past twenty-five years the Notre Dame community has campaigned for non-discrimination for LGBTQ students, faculty and staff every two years. We have petitioned, won every single student and faculty government vote, got national media, rallied, worn t-shirts, hunger struck and yet we have never won.

I think the administration no longer seriously considers the issue. (They did consider it in 1995-1997 - when they had a taskforce on the nondiscrimination clause whose conclusion they rejected.)

The Problem
The Occupy Movement is in a serious decline. Occupy Philadelphia turnout is down to a fifth (or less) of its regular attendance for key events like General Assemblies, occupations (ex. the Independence Mall 6 month anniversary), and protests. For instance, our General Assemblies will have twenty people instead of over a hundred. Several of the working groups are very successful, but in general the level of participation has fallen dramatically.