Prison officer surprised he was fired after zapping children with 50,000-volt stun gun – Boing Boing

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/04/prison-officer-surpr.html

Prison officer Walter Schmidt zapped visiting children with a 50,000-volt stun gun to give them a taste of life in a Florida jail. Two of the kids were knocked screaming to the floor with burns on their arms. One child went to the hospital.

“It wasn’t intended to be malicious, but educational,” said Schmidt. “The big shock came when I got fired.”

What an asshole.

MIT OpenCourseWare | History | 21H.001 How to Stage a Revolution, Fall 2007 | Home

Do I say often enough how much I love the Internet? Well, I love the Internet.

MIT OpenCourseWare | History | 21H.001 How to Stage a Revolution, Fall 2007 | Home.

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous.” – Mao Zedong, 1927. (Image by Prof. William Broadhead, Prof. Meg Jacobs, Prof. Peter Perdue, and Prof. Jeffrey Ravel.)

Course Description

21H.001, a HASS-D, CI course, explores fundamental questions about the causes and nature of revolutions. How do people overthrow their rulers? How do they establish new governments? Do radical upheavals require bloodshed, violence, or even terror? How have revolutionaries attempted to establish their ideals and realize their goals? We will look at a set of major political transformations throughout the world and across centuries to understand the meaning of revolution and evaluate its impact. By the end of the course, students will be able to offer reasons why some revolutions succeed and others fail. Materials for the course include the writings of revolutionaries, declarations and constitutions, music, films, art, memoirs, and newspapers.

It IS your sister, friend, classmate, partner: A Survivor’s Thoughts on the (In)visibility of Sexual Assault « SDS Womyn’s Caucus Blog

http://sdswomynscaucus.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/it-is-your-sister-friend-classmate-partner-a-survivor’s-thoughts-on-the-invisibility-of-sexual-assault/

Written by: Nicole Davis, DC SDS

“As a survivor and feminist involved in radical organizing, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the dissociation that occurs between our political analysis and actual practice. From an analytical standpoint, our collective liberation discourse often acknowledges the existence and prevalence of sexual assault as a mechanism of fear, part of the “power over” that exists in our society to maintain systems of domination, perpetuated by a system of patriarchy.“