Well, This Is A Thing

United States of America: Officially a Third World Country

Well, New York City, anyway:

"Independent Budget Office report on New York city income disparity.

1. The poorest tenth (decile) of the city’s population has an average income of $988, and claim 0.1% of the city’s total income.
2. The richest 10% of New Yorkers have 58% of total income, and the richest 5%, 49%.
3. The average income of the poorest 30% is $6,373, on a par with Egypt and about $1,200 below China’s.
4. The city’s median income—the level at which half the population is richer and half is poorer—is $28,213. That’s roughly the level of Greece.
5. The average income of the top 10% (a category that begins at $105,368) is $387,259.
6. The average income of the top 1% (a category that begins at $493,439) is $2,247,515.

How does the city’s income distribution compare with that of Brazil, a country with a worldwide reputation for stunning inequality?

• The income of the top 20% of New Yorkers is 64 times that of the bottom 20%. In Brazil, that ratio is 17 times.
• The income of the top 10% of New Yorkers is 582 times that of the poorest 10%. In Brazil, that ratio is 35 times."

occupyduniya.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/new-york/

i punched my fist into my face

BETTERLATETHANNEVERNIRVANAMONDAY

" Courtney Love has stunned Nirvana fans by offering Simon Cowell her late husband Kurt Cobain's songs for use on British talent show The X Factor.

In a tweet to the music mogul, who fronts the hit show, Love appears to be a fan of contestant Janet Devlin and suggests she should have her pick from Nirvana's back catalogue, which she owns, for an upcoming show.

Love writes, "@SimonCowell you want some Nirvana songs? @JanetJealousy is from same town as Kurt? I have the perfect idea for that, call me babe." "

The Police State

Here's an article that compiles videos and images of acts of police brutality against Occupy protesters. It's horrifying and dystopic.

Here's an article that argues the obvious fact that, yes, pepper spray used in situations like the ones above, below, and in the previously linked post is a form of torture.

And, fine, here's Glenn Greenwald on this:

"The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.

"The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been “persuaded” — through fear and intimidation — to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put it: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it’s only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest."

"This is the most important effect of the Occupy movement: acts of defiance, courage and conscience are contagious. Just as the Arab Spring clearly played some significant role in spawning, sustaining and growing the American Occupy movement, so too have the Occupy protesters emboldened one another and their fellow citizens. The protest movement is driving the proliferation of new forms of activism, citizen passion and courage, and — most important of all — a sense of possibility. For the first time in a long time, the use of force and other forms of state intimidation are not achieving their intended outcome of deterring meaningful (i.e., unsanctioned and unwanted) citizen activism, but are, instead, spurring it even more. The state reactions to these protests are both highlighting pervasive abuses of power and generating the antidote: citizen resolve to no longer accept and tolerate it. This is why I hope to see the Occupy movement — even if it adopts specific demands — remain an outsider force rather than reduce itself into garden-variety partisan electioneering: in its current form, it is demanding and re-establishing the indispensable right of dissent, defiance of unjust authority, and sustained protest."

Glenn Greenwald on Democratic Party Co-option of OWS

One used to be able to leave it up to Dave Mattos to re-post items from Glenn Greenwald's blog, but times have changed: there's an international left movement, Vincent D'Onofrio is making his directorial debut, Kings of Leon is taking a half-year hiatus, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned exactly one week ago. Plus this shit is rock solid:

"How does anyone think these protesters will be convinced that it’s exclusively the GOP — and not the Democratic Party and the Obama WH — who 'protect the rich' when: Wall Street funded the Democrats far more than the GOP in the 2008 election; the Democrats’ key money man, Charles Schumer, is one of the most devoted Wall Street servants in the country; Obama empowered in key positions Wall Street servants such as Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Bill Daley, Rahm Emanuel, and an endless roster of former Goldman officials; JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been dubbed 'Obama’s favorite banker' after Obama publicly defended his post-bailout $17 million bonus; the President named the CEO of GE to head his jobs panel; the DCCC and DSCC exist to ensure the nomination of corporatist candidates and Blue Dogs whose political worldview is servitude to the lobbyist class; the Democratic President, after vocally urging an Age of Austerity, tried very hard to usher in cuts to Social Security and an increase in the age for Medicare eligibility; and the Obama administration has not only ensured virtually no accountability for the rampant Wall Street fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis, but is actively pressuring New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others to agree to a woefully inadequate settlement to forever shield banks from the consequences of their pervasive mortgage fraud."

Read the whole hyper-hyperlinked piece here.

Is This Going To Be The Best Movie Ever???

Yes.

Repost from Verso Books blog

Verso NY found itself in a strange situation last night: we were putting the finishing touches to our new book on the Occupy movement, written and edited by our comrades at n+1, at the very moment that NYPD were evicting Liberty Park. While doing so, the city authorities threw the 5,000-book People’s Library into a sanitation truck—joining, in their own sordid way, a tradition that stretches from the the sacking of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad, through the Nazis burning Jewish books, to the destruction of libraries in Sarajevo and Baghdad in 1992 and 2003.

The Occupy movement has now spread its roots across the globe, with over 100 occupations in the US alone—and brutal evictions in other cities have tended to lead to new, stronger encampments, often within twenty-four hours. As I write this post, lawyers are fighting the city and NYPD in court, to allow protesters back in, with their belongings. The OWS general assembly met in Foley Square last night—and a new poll shows that a clear majority of New York voters support the 24-hour occupation. The Writers and Artists Affinity Group is planning to help restock the People’s Library, and Verso will of course be contributing (once again) a lot of books. As the protesters chanted last night: “You can't evict an idea.”

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/800-biblioclasm-or-you-cant-evict-an-idea

FETISHISM OF DIGITAL COMMODITES AND HIDDEN EXPLOITATION

A repost. Wu Ming 1 (a member of the Italian writers' collective of the same name) has produced the most theoretically definitive political economy of the internet, social media, Apple gadgets, and all the other components of so-called "cognitive capitalism" that I've ever read.

Read it here.

"Are you one of the 700-and-something million Facebook users? Well, it means that you produce contents for the network every day: any kind of contents, including emotions and relations. You are part of Facebook’s general intellect. To put it short, Facebook exists and works thanks to all the people like you. What is Facebook if not a mass of collective intelligence that is not produced by Zuckerberg & Company, but by users?

"In fact, you actually work on Facebook. You do not notice it, but you’re working. You work and do not earn—-others are making money with your work.

What turns out to be useful here is the Marxian concept of 'surplus labour'. It is not an abstruse concept: it is the part of work that, albeit producing value, is not converted into salary but in profit for the capitalist, since the latter owns the means of production.
If there is profit, it means that there has been surplus labour. Otherwise, if all the labour were paid according to the value it creates—-well, that would be communism, a society with no classes. It is obvious that the capitalist must pay the workers less than the sum he earns with the sale of commodities. This is what 'profit' means—-it means paying workers less than the actual value of their labour.
For several reasons, the capitalist may not be able to sell those commodities and make profits. But this does not mean that the workers have not provided surplus labour. The whole capitalist society is based on surplus value and surplus labour.

"Your whole work is surplus work on Facebook, because you are not paid. Everyday Zuckerberg sells your surplus work—-that is to say, he sells your life (your sensitive data, your navigation patterns, etc.) and your relations. He makes several million dollars each day, because he is the owner of the mean of production, and you are not.
Information is a commodity. Knowledge is a commodity. In fact, it is the quintessential commodity in Post-Fordism (or whatever you want to call it). It is a productive force and a commodity at the same time, just like workforce. The Facebook community produces pieces of information (on individual tastes, consumption habits, market trends) that are wrapped up in form of statistics and sold to others and/or used for customising ads and any other kind of offer.
Moreover, as a representation of the most extended network of relations on the planet, Facebook itself is a commodity. The company is able to sell information only if, at the same time and incessantly, it keeps selling that particular representation of itself. That representation too is generated by users, but Zuckerberg is the one who pockets the cheque.

"Of course, the kind of 'work' described above is not comparable for toil and exploitation to the labour mentioned in the early paragraphs. In addition, Facebook users do not form a social class. The point is that we must always consider both the toil at the base of hardware production and the continuous, predatory embezzlement of collective intelligence taking place on the internet. As I wrote above, they are two 'co-existent levels'. The production of value depends on both activities, and they should be pictured and analysed together."

the amazing leopard slug

Happy Halloween

via Reddit

"Anyone who expressed difficulty seeing or understanding what motivates these protests revealed many things about themselves. None is flattering. The only thing that’s surprising is that these protests didn’t happen sooner and that they’re not more widespread and intense. I think it’s become increasingly clear that that is likely to change, and soon. Like the Arab Spring, the rapid growth of these protests should be a permanent antidote against defeatism. It’s unclear what these protests will accomplish — that still depends on how many people join them and what they cause it to be — but, already, they prove that the possibility always exists for subverting even the most seemingly invulnerable power factions. That hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility that these protests are only in their incipient stages is one of the more exciting and positive political developments in some time. It’s been clear for quite awhile that unrest and disruptions — and the fear which they alone can put in the hearts and minds of those responsible for widespread ills — are absolute prerequisites for meaningful reform (our fundamentally corrupted electoral process certainly can’t and won’t accomplish that). These protests at least reflect the possibility, the template, for that to happen. And anyone expressing confusion about why these protests are erupting is almost certainly someone" invested in keeping things exactly the way they are.

- Glenn Greenwald

To Serve and Protect, I'm Sure

More "Occupy" Things

This is so much bullshit:

Amy Kremer, chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, says the Wall Street demonstrators “don’t even know why they’re out there protesting on Wall Street.”
“I don’t think it’s the left’s answer to the tea party movement, and there are a lot of people there that don’t support Barack Obama,” Kremer told POLITICO. “I think they’re just unhappy people that don’t know really what they want.”
Kremer insisted that the protesters have “completely unrealistic” goals and lack a unified message, and that the absence of clear objectives make it difficult to take the demonstrators seriously.

“You know, it’s really kind of bizarre. These kids are out there and have on these T-shirts that say ‘F capitalism.’ It’s really ironic that they’re out there and communicating through their gadgets that were created through competition and free enterprise and capitalism,” she said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65410.html#ixzz1a9CbvC6R

First, there is a very typical source of confusion at the get-go. This is the Left standing up, not liberals or Democrats. There is some crossover, but this is related to the Democratic Party only insofar (and I would argue less) than the Tea Party is/was related to the Republican Party, a connection they themselves uniformly reject. So it's strange to hear their spokesperson claim they're not like the Tea Party because they don't support a leader of one of the "teams" they should ostensibly be supporting.

Secondly, I keep reading over and over and over that the protesters "lack a clear message," "aren't unified," and "don't know what they want." This is a totally nonsensical way to dismiss this movement categorically (as with the emphasis on the large numbers of young people among the protesters, as if we didn't just witness young people driving massive social and political change in the Middle East). Did the Tea Party have a clear message when they were at this stage in their development? Do they now? Furthermore, the message seems to be pretty clear. We are hearing the long-dormant voice of the Left reassert itself in this country right now. It is incredibly exciting, though no one should really be surprised at this point.

As to the opinion that demands like "the wealthy shouldn't get to make all the decisions in a democracy," "corporations shouldn't have the same legal status as people," and "the banks that ruined our economy and left a massive number of us unemployed as a result shouldn't be rewarded for those actions, but rather held accountable" are "completely unrealistic," if that is true things are darker than even I see them.

And smart phones have nothing to do with this.

Occupy Wall Street

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/04/see-you-october-5

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/03/heat-on-wall-street

http://nplusonemag.com/notes-from-an-occupation

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-we-take-manhattan.html

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/30/labor-unions-begin-voting-to-support-occupy-wall-street/

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12029/labor_movement_rolls_into_wall_street_occupation/

http://lbo-news.com/2011/09/30/shaking-a-fist-at-the-nypd/

http://lbo-news.com/2011/09/29/the-occupy-wall-street-non-agenda/

http://jacobinmag.com/blog/?p=1663

Everything at http://kasamaproject.org/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/04.htm#v25zz99h-333

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/02/1022031/-JP-Morgan-buys-NYPD-for-$46-million

etc.

Whoa!

It is so weird to see media people doing their jobs, but this guy does it very well in this video!

Peace Out NYC

"New York has a couple of characteristics that are undeniable and one of those is that it’s a magnet for assholes who couldn’t get any attention at home and decided that the problem wasn’t that they weren’t interesting but that there were all these squares around them in Dubuque or whatever and they need to go to some big cosmopolitan city like New York where people will appreciate them."

-Steve Albini

NIRVANA MONDAY RETURNS

"What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation: the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist culture. Witness, for instance, the establishment of settled 'alternative' or 'independent' cultural zones, which endlessly repeat older gestures of rebellion and contestation as if for the first time. 'Alternative' and 'independent' don't designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within the mainstream. No-one embodied (and struggled with) this deadlock more than Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew that he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, that even realizing it is a cliché. The impasse that paralyzed Cobain is precisely the one that Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in 'a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, [where] all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices and styles in the imaginary museum'. Here, even success meant failure, since to succeed would only mean that youw ere the new meat on which the system could feed. But the high existential angst of Nirvana and Cobain belongs to an older moment; what succeeded them was a pastiche-rock which reproduced the forms of the past without anxiety." - Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

Julian Assange: Statement on the Unauthorised, Secret Publishing of the Julian Assange “autobiography” by Canongate

statement:

http://www.wikileaks.org/Julian-Assange-Statement-on-the.html

product description:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Julian-Assange-Unauthorised-Autobiography/dp/0857863843/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316954000&sr=8-1

Troy Davis

Troy Davis is a man whom any reasonable system of justice would have declared innocent twenty years ago. Instead, he's been on death row since his August 1991 conviction for the murder of Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail, a conviction which rested solely on the testimony of nine eyewitnesses, seven of whom have since recanted. One of the two witnesses who has not recanted is himself considered a suspect in the murder (and was instrumental in Troy's arrest). Troy was twenty years old when he was arrested. Here's a picture of him (not in prison):

I said his conviction "rested solely" on the testimony of nine eyewitnesses. In other words, there was (and still is) no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. His execution has been stayed three times since his conviction, and in 2007 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles vowed not to allow Troy to be executed "unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt" as to his guilt, a vow which has now been broken with the board's decision this morning to deny his petition for clemency. Davis is now scheduled to be executed tomorrow at 7 p.m. Amnesty International is petitioning Savannah, Georgia District Attorney Larry Chisolm to seek a withdrawal of the death warrant against Troy. This is a campaign which is supported by everyone from Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson to the pope and former Republican member of congress Bob Barr. So overcome your squeamishness about feeling like a liberal and sign the petition. And keep Robespierre's sage words in your mind as you do:

"Listen to the voice of justice and reason. It cries out to you that human judgements are never certain enough to justify a society of men subject to error dealing death to another man. Even if you could imagine the most perfect judicial order, even if you had found the most upright and enlightened judges, there would still remain some room for error or caution. Why forbid yourselves the means of repairing them? Why condemn yourselves to the inability to lend a helping hand to oppressed innocence? What do sterile regrets, illusory reparations matter to a vain shadow, to insensible ash? They are the sad testimony of the barbaric temerity of your penal laws. Take from a man the possibility to expiate his crime by repentance or acts of virtue; pitilessly close off to him any return to virtue, self-esteem, rush his descent, so to speak, into the tomb still covered by the recent stain of his crime is, in my eyes, the most horrible refinement in cruelty.

"The first obligation of a legislator is to form and preserve public morals, the source of all freedom, source of all social happiness. When in running to a particular goal he turns away from this general and essential goal he commits the most vulgar and dire of errors.... If in place of this powerful, calm and moderate severity that should characterize it they place anger and vengeance; if they spill human blood that they could spare and that they have no right to spread; if they spread out before the people cruel scenes and cadavers wounded by torture, it then alters in the hearts of citizens the ideas of the just and the unjust; they plant the seed in the midst of society of ferocious prejudices that will produce others in their turn. Man is no longer for man so sacred an object: we have a less grand idea of his dignity when public authority puts his life at risk. The idea of murder inspires less fear when the law itself gives the example and the spectacle. The horror of crime is diminished when it is punished by another crime. Do not confuse the effectiveness of a penalty with the excess of severity: the one is absolutely opposed to the other. Everything seconds moderate laws; everything conspires against cruel laws."

still cool

Smoke Up, Then Move To Cuba

From Popular Science:

"From the island nation known for the quality of its cigars comes some pretty big news today:Xinhua reports that Cuban medical authorities have released the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer. CimaVax-EGF is the result of a 25-year research project at Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology, and it could make a life or death difference for those facing late-stage lung cancers, researchers there say.

"CimaVax-EGF isn’t a vaccine in the preventative sense--that is, it doesn’t prevent lung cancer from taking hold in new patients. It’s based on a protein related to uncontrolled cell proliferation--that is, it doesn’t prevent cancer from existing in the first place but attacks the mechanism by which it does harm.

"As such it can turn aggressive later-stage lung cancer into a manageable chronic disease by creating antibodies that do battle with the proteins that cause uncontrolled cell proliferation, researchers say."

Egypt Update: Yikes Town

"Since it took over patrolling the streets from the police on January 28, 2011, Egypt’s military has arrested almost 12,000 civilians and brought them before military tribunals, Human Rights Watch said today. This is more than the total number of civilians who faced military trials during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak and undermines Egypt’s move from dictatorship to democratic rule, Human Rights Watch said."

"In a September 5 news conference Gen. Adel Morsy of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) said that between January 28 and August 29, military tribunals tried 11,879 civilians. The tribunals convicted 8,071, including 1,836 suspended sentences; a further 1,225 convictions are awaiting ratification by the military."

"Defendants in Egyptian military courts usually do not have access to counsel of their own choosing and judges do not respect the rights of defense. Judges in the military justice system are military officers subject to a chain of command and therefore do not enjoy the independence to ignore instructions by superiors."

"Military courts have acquitted only 795 of the nearly 12,000 cases they have tried, a conviction rate of 93 percent, Human Rights Watch said.

"In July, the SCAF issued statement number 64 in which it announced that it was limiting the use of military tribunals to three categories of crimes: “thuggery,” rape, and assault against police officers, a limitation of little practical relevance since these categories cover the vast majority of cases before tribunals over the past months. The vast majority of those sentenced by military tribunals are not political cases but involve individuals arrested in connection with alleged regular criminal activities. Those sentenced included a 16-year-old child, Islam Harby Raga, currently in Tora prison serving a seven-year sentence after a military trial in February in which he was convicted on charges of assaulting a public official."

Blogger Maikel Nabil, currently on hunger strike, is serving a three-year prison sentence for “insulting the military establishment” and “spreading false information” – in fact, for peaceful expression of his views on his blog and on Facebook. Nabil’s lawyers have appealed his sentence and another military court will hear his appeal on November 1. On September 5, Morsy insisted that there were no cases regarding freedom of expression before the military courts, saying that Nabil was a case of “insulting the armed forces.”

Full article

Maybe the worst thing I've ever seen in a major newspaper

This column. Make sure to read the last paragraph especially.

Why Are We In Haiti?

An article on the Guardian's website asks this question after a video came to light that showed UN "peacekeeping forces" raping an 18 year old boy in Port Salut. The video is in the article, but I won't post it here. The soldiers are laughing throughout.

"The incident is likely to pour more gasoline on the fire of resentment that Haitians have for the UN troops who have occupied their country for more than seven years. There has been a dire pattern of abuses: in December 2007, more than 100 UN soldiers from Sri Lanka were deported under charges of sexual abuse of under-age girls. In 2005, UN troops went on the rampage in Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas in Port-au-Prince, killing as many as 23 people, including children, according to witnesses. After the raid, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders reported: "On that day, we treated 27 people for gunshot wounds. Of them, around 20 were women under the age of 18."

"WikiLeaks cables released in the last week reveal that the Timothy Carney, representing the United States government as the top-ranking diplomat in Haiti in 2006, warned that such raids would "inevitably cause unintended civilian casualties given the crowded conditions and flimsy construction of tightly packed housing in Cité Soleil". But Washington – showing its lack of respect for human life in Haiti – offered no objections to further raids, which continued into 2006.

"And make no mistake about it: the UN occupation of Haiti is really a US occupation – it is no more a multilateral force than George W Bush's "coalition of the willing" that invaded Iraq. And it is hardly more legitimate, either: it was sent there in 2004 after a US-led effort toppled Haiti's democratically elected government. Far from providing security for Haitians in the aftermath of the coup, Minustah stood by while thousands of Haitians who had supported the elected government were killed, and officials of the constitutional government jailed. Recent WikiLeaks cables also confirm that the US government sees Minustah as an instrument of its policy there.

"This latest incident could shed some light on the nature of its mission, just as the photos from Abu Ghraib made plain for most of the world the brutality of the US occupation of Iraq. Images cannot be so easily dismissed or buried as words. And the images from this video are symbolic of what the "international community" has been doing to Haiti since the country won its independence from France in the world's first successful slave-led revolution.

"There is no legitimate reason for a military mission of the United Nations in Haiti. The country has no civil war, and is not the subject of a peace-keeping or post-conflict agreement. And the fact that UN troops are immune from prosecution or legal action in Haiti encourages abuses. The occupying troops don't speak the language either, which severely limits their capacity for any positive security role; can you imagine how effective a police force in Washington, DC would be if it spoke only Japanese?

"To make things even worse, it is now virtually certain that Minustah brought the cholera bacteria to Haiti that has killed more than 6,000 Haitians and infected more than 400,000 in the last 10 months. This was an act of gross negligence: there should have been supervision to make sure that fecal waste from UN troops was not dumped into the water supply, given the risks of such a deadly contamination and the known incapacity of Haiti's water, sanitation and public health system."

...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYl-2Wsvfrc&feature=related

Schaefer had barely added the orange-and-yellow depiction of fire shooting from the roof of a Chase Bank branch when police rolled up to the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard and Sylvan Street on July 30.

"They told me that somebody had called and said they felt threatened by my painting," Schaefer said.

"They said they had to find out my intention. They asked if I was a terrorist and was I going to follow through and do what I was painting."

No, Schaefer said. He explained that the artwork was intended to be a visual metaphor for the havoc that banking practices have caused to the economy.

A terrorist certainly would not spend hours on a public sidewalk creating an oil painting of his intended target, he told the officers.

The police took down his name, address and telephone number on a form — Schaefer declined to provide his Social Security number — and departed.

"They were friendly. They weren't intimidating," he said. "I figured that when they left, they probably decided the episode was stupid and they'd just wad up the form and throw it away."

Wrong. On Tuesday, two more officers showed up at Schaefer's home. This time they were plainclothes detectives.

"One of them asked me, 'Do you hate banks? Do you plan to do that to the bank?' " Schaefer again explained what his painting symbolizes.

He is actually doing a series of paintings depicting banks ablaze, he said. His first one two months ago featured a Burbank Chase branch, and he has a Bank of America painting in progress, he said. He will feature other large banks' branches as well; he does his own banking at a small community bank, Schaefer said.

"The flames symbolize bringing the system down," he said. "Some might say that the banks are the terrorists."
FULLSTORY

A Post Asking You To Give Money

Not going to happen ever again, probs, this place has been important to me and many other Olympians, so I wanted to post about it. Plus Jessie already posted a Kickstarter for the Che, so fair game. This venue is called the Northern, and it is in Olympia, WA. In addition to being a venue it is also a gallery space. They have amazing all-ages shows there, and the only other venue for all-ages shows in Olympia is houses, so it's important. Two of the best shows I have seen in my entire life so far have been there. Their building just got bought and they got kicked out by the new owner, and need some money for a deposit on a new location. Give them your money please, if you have it to spare.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/northern/relocating-northern-the-olympia-all-ages-project

bay area

The Revolution Will Be Liveblogged

A typically great article by Glenn Greenwald went up on Salon today in which he discusses the government's efforts to control the flow of information on the internet. As Glenn has said many times before:

"The free flow of information and communications enabled by new technologies -- as protest movements in the Middle East and a wave of serious leaks over the last year have demonstrated -- is a uniquely potent weapon in challenging entrenched government power and other powerful factions."

Worth excerpting here are two things. First, this:

"Earlier this week, when San Francisco residents gathered in the BART subway system to protest the shooting by BART police of a 45-year-old man, city officials shut down underground cell phone service entirely for hours; that, in turn, led to hacking reprisals against BART by the hacker collective known as "Anonymous." As the San-Fransisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation put it on its website: "BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak." Those efforts in Britain and San Fransisco are obviously not yet on the same scale as those in other places, but it illustrates how authorities react to social disorder: with an instinctive desire to control communication technologies and the flow of information."

And also this:

"It is not hard to understand why the fears driving these actions are particularly acute now. The last year has seen an incredible amount of social upheaval, not just in the Arab world but increasingly in the West. The Guardian today documented the significant role which poverty and opportunity deprivation played in the British riots. Austerity misery -- coming soon to the U.S. -- hassparked serious upheavals in numerous Western nations. Even if one takes as pessimistic a view as possible of an apathetic, meek, complacent American populace, it's simply inevitable that some similar form of disorder is in the U.S.'s future as well."

"The intensely angry "town hall" political protests from last August, though wildly misdirected at health care reform, gave a glimpse of the brewing societal anger and economic anxiety; even Tea Party politicians are now being angrily harangued by furious citizens over growing joblessness and loss of opportunity as Wall Street prospers and Endless Wars continue. This situation -- exploding wealth inequality combined with harsh austerity, little hope for improvement and a growing sense of irreversible national decline -- cannot possibly be sustained for long without some serious social unrest."

"Economic suffering and anxiety -- and anger over it and the flamboyant prosperity of the elites who caused it -- is only going to worsen. So, too, will the refusal of the Western citizenry to meekly accept their predicament. As that happens, who it is who controls the Internet and the flow of information and communications takes on greater importance. Those who are devoted to preserving the current system of prerogatives certainly know that, and that is what explains this obsession with expanding the Surveillance State and secrecy powers, maintaining control over the dissemination of information, and harshly punishing those who threaten it. That's also why there are few conflicts, if there are any, of greater import than this one. "

"They called it a riot in Newark, when the people arose as one
In Detroit and Boston and Cleveland and Watts they fought back with firebombs and guns.
'What's the matter with these n*ggers?' they said. 'They seem to be going wild!
All of this fuss over one incident - a policeman killing a child?
And why are they burning and looting the stores? The merchant has been their friend!
Well, maybe he cheated for a few cents, every now and then.
And what about the tenements they're burning down in the slums?
Some dog they call a slumlord is losing his income!'
What a scare they received when the brothers said, 'No, let's not burn the ghettos down,
We'll break up in groups and firebomb and loot on the opposite side of town!'
So then they called in their army, machine guns, and tanks and ordered them to attack
The people arose together as one and used what they had to fight back
And now that's it happened, the question arise: why all the fury and fuss?
If they look over their past and examine their deeds, they'll know what's the matter with us.
When will the promises be fulfilled that they've made to us over the years?
Where's the pay we have not received for our blood and sweat and tears?
Where's the employment that we need, the decent salary?
The welfare payments will not do to feed a family.
They say conditions are this way because we don't have skills
But instead they offer us extermination pills.
So we sound a warning - they'd better change their tune,
They don't have long to make things right; they better do something soon!
Their law enforcement will not work, whatever they conspire
Will only serve to make us strong - we will fight fire with fire.
No, that was not a riot that they saw down in the slums,
That was a dress rehearsal for things that's yet to come."

- The Last Poets, "Black Soldier"

http://socialistworker.org/2011/08/12/urban-revolts-and-social-change

"Violence allows those who feel powerless to gain a sense of empowerment. Looting allows people who feel betrayed by the system to seize a bit back. A provocation (stories of police killing an innocent child or man from the neighborhood) can unleash a firestorm of protest, and a weak police response can encourage people to indulge their desires to ‘strike back’ against the system, unleashing wave after wave of opportunistic looting and destruction (something similar also occurred in the banlieu riots in the immigrant suburbs of Paris in 2005.)

"Oddly, such destructive riots are more likely in democracies, if people feel they have no chance to gain within the system, or to change it. Where people are fighting to gain democracy (as in the Middle East) they are more likely to act in a way that helps them gain support and appear deserving and capable of self-government. But where people live in a democracy, and feel that democracy is doing nothing for them, or is being manipulated and tilted against, them, they may well rage. And when the ‘state’ in the person of police, which is supposed to protect them, instead kills one of their own, that is just the kind of action that justifies retribution against the existing order.

...

"Today, Harold Myerson reported in the Washington Post that Senate Republican Whip and GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander have 'no appetite for extending either the payroll tax [reduction] or the unemployment benefits.' What that means, even though few people seem to realize it, is that Republicans want to impose a $1 trillion dollar tax increase over the next ten years on EVERY AMERICAN earning $100,000 or less, while continuing $400 billion in tax breaks on American households earning more than $250,000 per year (see my post 'The Republicans’ Trillion Dollar Tax Increase'). AND they want to cut the last supports of long-term unemployment insurance out from under those unable to find jobs....

"At some point, if this continues and Obama is stymied in his efforts to continue payroll tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits, rage at this injustice will grow. It will be directed against those who stopped Obama, but more generally against ‘the system.’ It will break out after some striking provocation, but will continue in a fury of destruction."

http://newpopulationbomb.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/london-is-burning-will-new-york-or-l-a/

2SOON

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDSLFovtMCw

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, "mindlessly," motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that's why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.

- Russell Brand

VERY GOOD ANALYSIS OF THE WHOLE DOWNGRADING THING/ A VERY GOOD RESPONSE TO A SHITTY "JOURNALIST"

The Daily Show - Rise of the Planet of the AAs
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I used all caps in the headline just because it was fun and no one reads this blog anyways so what the hell, fyi.

So, these riots are a very hard thing to get a grasp on? Because, on the one hand, I really, viscerally like watching a major city burn! It gets my blood pumping in a way I didn't know it could pump anymore (mid-20's people problems). This is the dominant thing that I am feeling about this whole situation. THEN AGAIN, these don't seem to be even remotely directed attacks?

I'm certainly not going to pretend to know anything about the political climate in the UK, but maybe someone else has heard or read something illuminating on this subject they could steer me towards?

Let's Stop Pretending

"Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- but a bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor -- but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged.

On healthcare, for instance, Obama passed a Heritage Foundation-inspired bailout of the private health insurance industry, all while undermining other more-progressive proposals. On foreign policy, he escalated old wars and initiated new ones. On civil liberties, he not only continued the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects but also claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without charge.

On financial issues, he fought off every serious proposal to reregulate banks following the economic meltdown; he preserved ongoing bank bailouts; and he resisted pressure to prosecute Wall Street thieves. On fiscal matters, after extending the Bush tax cuts at a time of massive deficits, he has used the debt ceiling negotiations to set the stage for potentially massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare -- cuts that would be far bigger than any of his proposed revenue increases.

As hideous and destructive as it is, this record is anything but weak. It is, on the contrary, demonstrable proof of Obama's impressive political muscle, especially because polls show he has achieved these goals despite the large majority of Americans who oppose them."

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