‘Seize and pay tribute:’ Lessons for America from recent finance capital conquests in Europe

Finance today is the means of conquering a country and getting what in the past took an army. Financial conquest is how you shift the taxes onto the population to pay the financial sector, how you load a population down with debt and make a population pay interest and amortization and penalties on debt service, you make a population pay for schooling instead of getting it free or a low price as used to be the case, you make a population take on a lifetime of debt in order to get a home that used to be affordable, you make the governments go into debt for the banks, so that in Europe governments can’t-don’t have a central bank to monetize their own deficits but actually have to borrow money from banks. You achieve-you essentially empty out an economy, and you take its economic surplus financially without an army, just by trying to promote what really is junk economics and junk politics, if the economics of Rubinomics in America under Clinton and Rubenomics in America under George Bush, and now with a vengeance under Obama-.

http://tinyurl.com/br96swl

100,000 march in Spain over austerity

At least 100,000 Spaniards angered by grim economic prospects and the political handling of the international financial crisis have turned out for street demonstrations in the country’s cities, marking the one-year anniversary of a movement that inspired similar pressure groups in other countries.

http://tinyurl.com/6t7cuqo

Deconstructing strident pro-austerity bias in American journalists’ economic coverage

The reporters’ adoption of the German perspective leads them to emulate Berlin’s refusal to consider the Greek perspective.  Instead, the reporters’ adopt the German framing of the issue.  That framing is that the Greeks are inexplicably “refusing to abide by the terms of the country’s international loan agreement.”  The idea that the Greek people should continue to take the Berlin elevator that has plunged their nation into a great depression because their disgraced leaders were coerced into agreeing to a deal that is destroying their nation is insane.

Democracy is all about throwing out leaders who have disgraced themselves, crushed the nation’s economy, and cravenly taken orders from a hostile foreign power.  The Greeks have done just that.  Why would anyone expect the Greeks to continue to follow a suicidal economic policy imposed by Germany?  Berlin and the NYT reporters share the bizarre belief that if your coerced leaders sign a suicide pact you have a duty to commit suicide because – a deal is a deal.

http://tinyurl.com/bpy2y2s

230,000 jobless Americans lost their unemployment insurance this weekend

More than 230,000 jobless Americans will lose their unemployment insurance by this weekend as reductions in the federal program that provides extended benefits to the long-term unemployed take broader effect.

The new round of reductions is hitting eight states this month, meaning that about 400,000 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have been cut off of the federal government’s extended unemployment benefits program this year, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the unemployed.

The cuts stem from a congressional agreement this year that will reduce the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 99 weeks to 79 weeks as the nation’s jobless rate declines.

http://tinyurl.com/73wzduv
Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/13/12” »

Boston Police Patrolman’s Assn magazine ‘Pax Centurion’ provides revealing look inside the minds of city police officers

I knew immediately that they all came from Cambridge, Newton, Arlington, Jamaica Plain, and other places where insane people reside. Soon, some sort of strange Native American or Indian music began to fill the air. The assembled idiots began a huge circle dance, back and forth for hours on end. Unfortunately, there were several young children with them, who were also forced to dance with the graying hippies. Those kids represent the next generation of idiot liberals, (they all looked like little Elizabeth Warrens, for some reason) and will be screwed up for life, or attend Harvard. (That’s redundant, isn’t it?)

And to think I actually submitted an overtime slip. For the entertainment alone, I should have paid the city…

http://tinyurl.com/cdbbdkm (Link is to the Nov/Dec 2011 issue pdf. Editorial excerpted is on page A7. This issue and others can be accessed directly from the Boston Police Patrolman’s Assn website http://bppa.org/)

“Occupy Cop” under attack – Retired Philadelphia Police Capt. Ray Lewis could lose his life insurance for wearing his uniform to a protest

Lewis continues to protest. In uniform. Last week he was in Center City Philadelphia, protesting outside police and FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] headquarters. He says that FOP leadership , a major force in city politics, depends on corporate donations to finance its union election campaigns and quarterly magazine.

“The major part of the movement is to hold corporations accountable and to stop them from having so much control over lives and the earth,” he says. “If John McNesby is a receiver of the favors of corporate America, then I’m going to be the number one enemy. Because I’m a tactical warhead.”

http://tinyurl.com/6w3qaz7

Video captures WI gov. Scott Walker describing ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to destroy unions

(video)

The video clip shows Walker meeting with Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has since donated $510,000 to Walker’s campaign. Hendricks asked: “Any chance we’ll get to be a completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work – what can we do to help you?”

“Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill,” Walker said. “The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we get for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out…That opens the door once we do that. That’s your bigger problem right there.”

http://tinyurl.com/burfls2

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/12/12” »

 Secure Communities program assailed by immigrant groups

Leaders from an immigrant rights group said Thursday they plan to “demand” that Gov. Deval Patrick sign an executive order against the planned launch next week of the controversial Secure Communities program.

“If he is really against this program he can really do it,” said Patricia Montes, executive director of the Latino immigrant organization Centro Presente.

The federal program, which refers arrested illegal immigrants to federal immigration officials, is slated to launch in Massachusetts next Tuesday, the Globe reported. Boston is the only community in Massachusetts that has enacted the program.

http://tinyurl.com/cetcgzy

Occupy global call to action on May 12th

We are living in a world controlled by forces incapable of giving freedom and dignity to the world’s population. A world where we are told “there is no alternative” to the loss of rights gained through the long, hard struggles of our ancestors, and where success is defined in opposition to the most fundamental values of humanity, such as solidarity and mutual support. Moreover, anything that does not promote competitiveness, selfishness and greed is seen as dysfunctional.

But we have not remained silent! From Tunisia to Tahrir Square, Madrid to Reykjavik, New York to Brussels, people are rising up to denounce the status quo. Our effort states “enough!”, and has begun to push changes forward, worldwide.

This is why we are uniting once again to make our voices heard all over the world this 12 May.

We condemn the current distribution of economic resources whereby only a tiny minority escape poverty and insecurity, and future generations are condemned to a poisoned legacy thanks to the environmental crimes of the rich and powerful. “Democratic” political systems, where they exist, have been emptied of meaning, put to the service of those few interested in increasing the power of corporations and financial institutions.

http://tinyurl.com/cjjumu2

Tactical briefing – Occupy’s turning point, and how governments are now using ‘lawfare’ to attack us

Last May 15, a hundred thousand indignados in Spain seized the squares across their nation, held people’s assemblies and catalyzed a global tactical shift that birthed Occupy Wall Street four months later. Our movement outflanked governments everywhere with a thousand encampments in large part because no one was prepared for Occupy’s magic combination of Spain’s transparent consensus-based acampadas with the Tahrir-model of indefinite occupation of symbolic space. Now exactly a year later, a big question mark hangs over our movement because it is clear that the same tactics may never work again.
Spring re-occupations have largely failed here in North America. The May Day General Strike was stifled by aggressive, preemptive policing that neutralized Occupy’s signature moves. In light of these challenges, Saturday’s May 12 rebirth of the indignados could be a tactical turning point.
Across the world, authorities are using “lawfare” to piecemeal outlaw any tactic that we used last year. In Spain, there is an attempt to criminalize the use of the internet to catalyze nonviolent protests and occupations. The International Business Times reports that this is part of a larger European move to “punish those who use social media and instant messaging to organize and co-ordinate street protests.” Canada wants to ban wearing masks at “unlawful assemblies,” a legal designation often used to disperse nonviolent protesters. Meanwhile Germany is taking a more direct route: they have simply issued a decree “banning” the Blockupy anti-bank protest in Frankfurt. As in the U.S., when outlawing free speech and the right to assembly doesn’t work, authorities are increasingly using brutal, paramilitary force.

http://tinyurl.com/czuuvkp

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/11/12” »

Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation

This initial reflection on the #Occupy Everywhere movements is based on my observations and participation in #Occupy Boston since late September 2011, including the period after the dismantling of the camp on December 10. I especially focus on how social media have shaped the forms and practices of #Occupy, comparing and contrasting the #Occupy movements to a previous wave of global justice activism that was also significantly influenced by digital media (Juris 2008a). How are the #Occupy movements using new technologies? What difference does employing social as opposed to other forms of new media make? How do virtual and physical forms of protest intersect? What are the strategic and political implications of emerging dynamics of organization and protest within #Occupy, particularly in terms of issues such as sustainability, racial diversity, political demands, and movement impact.

http://tinyurl.com/d42rjv6

[For more articles in Occupy in the new issue of American Ethnologist  magazine go here: http://www.americanethnologist.org/]

Rejecting the lie that Harvard doesn’t do student activism

Before a journalist suggests, yet again, that Harvard students never put their feet on the ground about issues they care about, I think it’s important to point out the impressive nature of this school year’s student activism. In the fall, students from the Trans Task Force and Anti-Imperialist Movement  protested President Drew G. Faust signing an agreement that brought Naval Reserve Office Training Corps back on campus. The students of the Environmental Action Committee and Students for a Just and Stable Future travelled to Boston and Washington D.C. with the Tar Sands Action Campaign to protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline; meanwhile, the Global Health and AIDS Coalition held multiple actions all year calling out both Senator Scott P. Brown and Merck & Co. for their failure to support global health goals.

While students staged a walkout of professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s Economics 10 lecture and prompted Goldman Sachs to cancel recruiting events at multiple colleges, Occupy Harvard maintained a tent city in Harvard Yard for over two months. Other students concerned about economic justice organized with library workers to demand no layoffs in the restructuring process. The Palestine Solidarity Committee held a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian administrative detainees; black student groups organized a rally for Trayvon Martin. And just last Saturday, Harvard students joined with feminists from around Boston to protest the War on Women. Moreover, this year’s student campaigns have been successful: In response to student demands, Harvard not only halted future investments in HEI Hotels and Resorts but also funded cage-free eggs in the dining halls and sustainable jobs for Harvard’s food service.

http://tinyurl.com/d6mylfo

The latest Occupy impostors – Two groups claiming to represent America’s youth are, in fact, fronts for phony D.C. centrism

Tens of thousands of young people took to parks, streets and banks last fall to demand an end to the laissez-faire political order that permitted financial titans to bankrupt the economy and deny us a chance at finding decent jobs.

Half a year later, a collection of young people backed by major foundations and companies like Dell are promoting two new organizations, Campaign for Young America and Fix Young America. In a recent profile, the New York Times touts the groups as “advocacy groups for jobless youth” on the order of the AARP or NRA. They are, the Times claims, “younger siblings of Occupy Wall Street, but with a nonpartisan agenda, more centralized leadership and one specific mission: to help young people find jobs.”
. . .

They are nothing at all like Occupy Wall Street: The groups have no real criticism of the American economic order, they are not democratically run, and they seem to focus on providing Monster.com-like service of helping individual people find jobs.

The book even includes a contribution from Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the conservative legislator who last May infamously accused Elizabeth Warren of being a liar.

http://tinyurl.com/chkx4c5

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/10/12” »

Universities hold students’ transcripts hostage over debt

American universities — whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks — are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind. A good summary of what this means comes from NYU’s Andrew Ross, a prof who helped start Occupy Student Debt: “It’s worse than indentured servitude. With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.”

http://tinyurl.com/bmb9rd9

The ‘Austerity Trap’

“When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets? That’s insane. Because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is … the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall,” the former secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration says about the backwardness of the budget cuts being imposed by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. “If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That’s an austerity trap. That’s what happened to Spain. It’s what’s happening even to Britain. It’s what’s happening to Europe as a whole. Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity.

“Now we’re gonna come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got these sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity in the United States. We have got to understand … that jobs and growth have to come first before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.”

http://tinyurl.com/cutm5r9

Europe in Revolt

In America, anti-austerity has found its voice through the Occupy movement, which stands resolutely outside electoral politics. But in Europe resistance has often been orchestrated through mass parties that do stand for elections. This Sunday’s vote saw the stunning success of many such groups across the continent. I spoke to Seth Ackerman, editor of a special section on the European left in Jacobin’s new issue, about the new developments.

http://tinyurl.com/72qx4n8

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/9/12” »