Occupy is shedding its liberal accretions and rapidly turning into something with much deeper roots, creating alliances that promise to transform the very notion of revolutionary politics in America.

I certainly identify with the liberal rather than radical tendencies that he is saying goodbye to. And although Occupy does not have any formal leaders, he is one of its most prominent informal leaders, and likely anticipates its future direction correctly.

I want no part of a revolutionary movement. As problematic as things are in this country, the idea that “nothing could be worse” is bunk. The history of the bloody 20th century shows that revolutionary movements often commit mass murder.

I don’t believe in tearing down the house you live in. If you look at history, evolution, not revolution, has the best track record. I would find Graeber’s vision of the future scary if I thought he had a chance of succeeding. Throughout history, however, anarchism has always been self-defeating,  and I expect it will remain that way.

Occupy has it’s moment, and it looks to me like that moment is passing away, as it turns it’s back on liberal accretions and other, even more conservative elements of the 99% to focus on a radical fringe.

I will continue to honor my pledge to give all earnings from my book through the end of this year to the Occupy movement. But I probably won’t be participating anymore (not just because of Graeber himself, but because I think he does indeed reflect where Occupy is headed).

My advocacy for a more mindful economics will have to find other outlets, for instance at the upcoming conference of the New Economics Institute,  and in the promotion of a more equitable, caring and lower growth economy that has a chance of being sustainable.

The rest of the videos, including a tutorial on how to do a “grounding” practice are here.

As I’m in Boston, I participated in meditations in Boston rather than in Manhattan, but I did visit New York and saw the tree, altar and circle where the meditations were held, and a Hindu service that was going on at the time.

I don’t dismiss the need to look for potential terrorists. One of those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed 6 and paved the way for 9/11, lived on the same street in New Jersey as my parents.  But if the NY police doesn’t have enough productive leads on possible terrorists, the public would be better served if they reassigned cops to the beat rather than waste resources on nonviolent Occupy protestors.

A lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn appeared to confirm that he had attended the events, saying that his client would not have been aware if the women who entertained him were prostitutes.

“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” the lawyer, Henri Leclerc, told a French radio station, Europe 1, in December.

One caution, though, is anything requring change to the US Constitution. Not that I’m against it in principal. It’s just that “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today,” according to one scholar. That’s why new democracies no longer look to the US Constituion as a model, with Canada a leading model instead, according to the New York Times. With the Republicans holdings to their interpretation of the Constitution with a quasi-fundamentalist attachment, any constitutional amendment that would actually make a useful difference is likely to be fillibustered.

Thus, while I agree that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that opened up the floodgates of corporate cash in elections was terrible, probably the worst in the last 100 years, and it is right to organize against it, countermeasures other than a constitutional amendment would be best, and another article in The Nation makes that point nicely (its behind a paywall, but worth reading in your library).