Memo Show Corzine Ordered Raiding MF Global Customer Account of $200 Million

We know America is a hopeless kleptocracy, but if Corzine does not go to jail, given the revelation that he approved the raiding of a customer account of $200 million, it means that no one in the officialdom is interested in keeping up the pretense that we have a functioning regulatory and judicial system.

http://tinyurl.com/7n6hxnu

Capitalist Life-Crises and The North American Left: Problems and Prospects

The struggles across the Middle East and North Africa and on-going resistance to austerity in Europe catalysed a fightback in North America – the Occupy Movement – that no one saw coming. Together, all testify to the pervasive and deepening crisis of capitalism, not just as an economic system, but as a comprehensive way of living and valuing.

This civilizational crisis creates the opportunity for a renewal of socialist politics, but also poses hard questions to socialists: what does capitalist crisis mean on the deepest levels, what are the lessons of the Occupy movement, what ought our relationship to existing political and social institutions be, and how to do we go about building a broad democratic movement that has a plausible chance of overcoming capitalist life-crises? The following ten theses aim to be part of a conversation, not the conclusion to an argument.

http://tinyurl.com/7tv8xcj

Letter to the editor: Cape Occupiers, like many, grateful to Calvary Baptist

Occupy Cape Cod has been meeting at the Calvary Baptist Church for the past five months. We have been welcomed there in an extraordinarily generous way, which seems to be characteristic of Pastor Smith and his congregation.

They give witness to Christ and what it means to follow him.

http://tinyurl.com/7fp25jy
Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/26/12” »

Law that enabled Trayvon Martin killing: ‘Hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it’
Florida lawmakers and the NRA are operating within a broader ideological framework. As NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer put it: “Through time, in this country, what I like to call bleeding heart criminal coddlers want you to give a criminal an even break, so that when you’re attacked, you’re supposed to turn around and run, rather than standing your ground and protecting yourself and your family and your property … Taking away the rights of law-abiding people and putting them in jeopardy of being prosecuted and then sued by criminals who were injured when they were committing crimes against victims is wrong.”

This rationale has several key hallmarks of conservative ideology: It adopts the liberal language of rights – but only to take them away from some, while turning them into privileges for others. It also pretends to be protecting the law-abiding against the criminal, and to oppose the erosion of traditional rights by the presumably liberal “bleeding heart criminal coddlers”. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Outside the home, the duty to retreat is the traditional common law doctrine. Hammer and the NRA are the ones radically altering the law. And the second prong – prohibiting criminal prosecution – goes even further.

“As the law stands, it contradicts the entire purpose behind the justice system. It takes the decision out of the hands of the jurors,” said Brian Cavanagh, head of the state attorney’s homicide unit, commenting with regard to a Broward County case in December 2011. It’s hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it.

http://tinyurl.com/89bjhvb

Mass state senator’s proposed legislation resembles  FL ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at issue in Trayvon Martin’s death

Under the legislation by Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, a Barre Democrat, the state would expand its current “Castle Doctrine,” which says a person has no duty to retreat from intruders at home before using deadly force.

Brewer’s bill would expand that Castle principle to using deadly force in public anyplace the person has a right to be. The principle is called the Stand Your Ground Principle. More than two dozen states have passed either the Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground or both, according to the Associated Press.

Florida’s “stand your ground law” is receiving new scrutiny after a 17-year-old, unarmed black man was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in a gated community. The captain is claiming self-defense during a confrontation.

http://tinyurl.com/8yn55q6

What is at the core of Occupy Wall Street movement?

(video)

Obstacles to unity between Occupy and US blacks ‘a political cultural problem.’

http://tinyurl.com/7dnrlwf

Wall Street Wage Gaps Give Women Yet Another Reason To Occupy

“Women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine stand in Lower Manhattan.”

So concluded Bloomberg reporter Frank Bass after crunching Census data on the gender wage gap in various professions. His findings: Out of 265 major occupations, service work such as shoe shining and personal care was the only one in which women earned, on average, more than men ($1.02 to every $1). And the high-paying jobs of Wall Street had the biggest gap:

The six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector: insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists.

http://tinyurl.com/6po9sew

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/25/12” »

Hundreds Rally in Harvard Square for Trayvon Martin, Against Pending State Law That Would Protect Martin’s Killer in Mass

The hundreds of people who rallied in the Harvard Square pit tonight weren’t just there to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Nor were they merely there to call attention to the atrocity that was unleashed on the state of Florida, where the unarmed 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed last month by George Zimmerman, an overzealous neighborhood watchdog who has yet to be arrested.

The throng of activists and onlookers was also calling attention to an alarming situation in the commonwealth – one that could soon lead to any number of comparable incidents happening right here. It seems there’s a sticky piece of legislation floating in the Massachusetts legislature – Senate Bill 661 – that would protect murderers like Zimmerman.

http://tinyurl.com/6uarqv8

Occupy Wall Street plans return to spotlight – but in what form?

Demonstrators torn over whether to concentrate on economic inequality or to move towards protesting police brutality.

http://tinyurl.com/6vyqs68

Occupy Earth: State Of The Environment Fundamentally Linked to Economic Injustice

From New York to St. Louis to Los Angeles, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) will be buzzing with spring activities throughout the United States. One of its many pending actions is to join forces with the environmental movement to launch Earth Month on March 24.

Dubbed “Disrupt Dirty Power,” the environmentally-focused occupy movement will support direct actions around the U.S. and abroad to call for both environmental and economic justice. These actions, according to the website www.disruptdirtypower.org, seek to “evict Wall Street polluters,” focusing on “dirty banks, big oil, big coal, fracking, uranium.” It claims that “the climate can’t wait and neither can we.” Initiated by an OWS affinity group called 99forEarth, the effort has been joined by various environmental groups.

http://tinyurl.com/7rzfs74

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/24/12” »

Facing protests from Occupy groups, Southern CA car dealerships pull advertising from Rush Limbaugh show

Toyota Carlsbad, Lexus Carlsbad and Lexus Escondido dealerships have pulled advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show on KOGO-AM 600 – a move that has prompted local groups to cancel a protest they had planned for this weekend.

Occupy Encinitas and Women’s Occupy San Diego were planning to picket outside the Toyota Carlsbad dealership to protest its support of Limbaugh, who they say is guilty of recently using “misogynistic hate speech toward women,” according to a news release from the group.

“Mr. Limbaugh’s misogynistic hate speech toward women was most recently demonstrated in a three-day diatribe disparaging law school student Sandra Fluke; including a demand that Ms. Fluke make and post ‘sex tapes on the internet’ and a characterization of women who use birth control as ‘sluts’ and ‘prostitutes,'” the news release reads.

http://tinyurl.com/7hm79jp

Federal student loan interest rate set to double

Federal subsidized Stafford loan interest rates are set to increase to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent  for undergraduate students on July 1.

Western Michigan University Director of Financial Aid Mark Delorey says the federal government increasing rates fits perfectly into a pattern of “eroding support” already displayed.

http://tinyurl.com/7kufvv4

Occupiers march for Trayvon Martin at “Million Hoodie March”

On Wednesday night, around 5,000 people took to the streets of New York to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old African-American who was killed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, last month. Martin was armed only with a pack of Skittles when Zimmerman shot him, claiming the boy looked “suspicious.” Martin’s crime – the same one committed by Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Ramarley Graham and others – appears to have been walking while black. Zimmerman has not been charged in the killing, despite a national outcry.

Organizers of the “Million hoodie march” for Trayvon Martin asked protesters to converge at Manhattan’s Union Square on Wednesday evening wearing hooded sweatshirts, to symbolically highlight the profiling used against non-white youths in hoodies. The plaza, from which Occupy supporters were evicted by police the night before, was once again full of Occupy participants and hundreds of others galvanized by the Trayvon Martin case. Many young, black marchers donned hoodies and held signs reading, “Am I next?”

http://tinyurl.com/72adnwj

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/23/12” »

Two arrested on Dewey Square during Occupy Boston women’s march

Video of aftermath of two kids getting arrested on Dewey Square — and of Boston Police Officers taunting the protesters. According to OBers in the video, the arrestees were goofing around on a jungle gym.

http://tinyurl.com/6vduq3t

Two protesters held after Occupy march

Two men who participated in an Occupy Boston march Tuesday night were arrested after climbing on structures in Dewey Square, police said. Boston police Captain Thomas Lee said the suspects, whom he did not identify, were among about 50 protesters who began marching in the downtown area at about 9 p.m. Lee said about 20 people marched to a lawn in Dewey Square, where the suspects were arrested at about 11 p.m. It was not clear Tuesday night what they would be charged with. Ariel Oshinsky, an Occupy Boston media volunteer, said the march was a gesture of solidarity with female Occupy protesters whom the group says were victims of police brutality Saturday in New York.

http://tinyurl.com/72tk664

Occupy Boston budding with warm weather

Occupy Boston is “out of hibernation” according to one of the group’s members, and they have plans to reoccupy, although when and where remains a mystery.

“We budgeted a certain amount of money for [reoccupying] and we have a tactical group putting something together,” said Robin Jacks, one of the group’s founders.

But Mayor Thomas Menino won’t stand for the group reclaiming public land.

http://tinyurl.com/8yoqcq9

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/22/12” »