...

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
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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."

Full Article

DO IT DO WITT

There is no reason that any of you should not contribute to this:

http://checafebenefit.tumblr.com/

See Any Trends?

You could almost replace the green with blue and it would be a voting map. Read about it, if you want. The most important thing here, of course, is this latest piece of an already significant body of evidence that Washington > Oregon. Suck it, Oregon.

More Of The Same

Here's today's Democracy Now, where Amy Goodman has some people on to talk about how shitty this "deal" is:

They get into it at around the 12 minute mark, after the headlines.

Hot Damn!

As I have said on this blog before, I am hot as fuck for Keith Olbermann's prose and delivery. Here's his "Special Comment" on the debt ceiling deal, with an incredibly rousing call to arms in the second half (too bad no one watches Current TV, right? Do people watch Current TV?):

Another thing that struck me from tonight's episode of Countdown was the statement made by Al Gore that over 75% of political campaign expenditures go towards 30 second TV ads. Really? I get "Middle America" and how they don't know how to use the internet or read there but, come on, who really decides on the candidate they're going to vote for based on a 30 second TV ad? Especially for fucking PRESIDENT. But, then again, as we continue to see, some people in this country are stupider than we could ever imagine. This is a place where nothing gets better anymore, it just gets more morbidly humorous, at best.

Another Win For Exploitation and Idiocy

Here is a summary of the deal made to raise the debt ceiling (hint: it involves cutting up to 2.2 trillion dollars in spending with NO new revenue coming in), here's Paul Krugman on how fucked up this really is (he sees it as the worst "compromise" Obama has made yet, by far), and here's why I put the word compromise in scare quotes.

From Krugman today:

"Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels.

"It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

"In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t."