Detainees

I was interviewed by James Feltzer

2012-01-18T19:31:00.001-05:00

on December 28, 2011. The MP3 is now available. I'm not big on talking over the phone, and the interviewed was conducted via Skype, which is phone-like enough, so I drank two big cans of Forster just to loosen my tongue a bit. I hope I didn't ramble too much.

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Collateral Savages

2012-01-16T17:42:00.006-05:00

As published on OpEd News, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 1/17/12:

It is a recurring theme: civilization committing barbaric acts to feed its refined gluttony. As we found out about American Marines urinating on dead Afghans, there was also a story about Brazilian loggers tying an eight-year-old girl to a tree and burning her to death. She belonged to the Awá, an Amazon tribe of around 300 members, with only 60 still clinging to their hunter-gatherer way of life. To maintain our so-called civilized standards of living, collateral damages are inevitable, and “savages” must be sacrificed.

If they get in the way of civilization’s quest for petroleum, lumber, tin, zinc, copper, whatever, they must be killed wholesale, or one by one, as was accomplished by Chris Kyle, currently touring bookstores to promote his American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History. Kyle killed 255 “savages,” his term, and can stand before God with a clear conscience, he told Bill O’Reily, because he was saving American lives. FOX being FOX, the question of why Kyle was in Iraq in the first place was not probed.

With his tunnel vision specialty, teamwork ethics and preoccupation with numbers, Kyle is the quintessential tool in civilization’s machinery. Tasked with long-distance, targeted killing, he performed outstandingly, and is proud of his feats, all carefully quantified. His 160 Pentagon-confirmed kills wipe out the previous American record of 109, held by Delbert F. Waldron, not to mention the relatively puny 93 of Carlos Hathcock. Kyle’s longest shot was 2,100 yards. Though impressively long, yes, very long, it’s dwarfed by the 2,700 yards recorded by one Horse Craig Harrison, a Brit.

Empire is civilization’s greatest efflorescence and final aim. With empire comes the tallest, biggest and longest of everything. Citizens of empire, down to the lowest cog, bathe themselves daily with numbers as a kind of self-congratulation. Counting themselves hoarse to prove that they are in fact content, they measure their achievement and happiness with Dow and Nasdaq indexes, inches on flat-screen TVs, cars sold, runs and touchdowns scored by sport heroes, and savages killed by even more heroes. A large number denoting anything, even debt, cheers up denizens of an empire since it is proof of their gigantism. Empires compete to see who can piss the longest and furthest, over the most continents.

What a contrast this is to a primitive nomad, who sees properties as a burden, and thus does not care to count hardly anything. The most extreme example of this is another Amazon tribe, the Pirahã, whose language includes no cardinal numbers at all. They simply can’t count, and have no interest in doing so. American scholar Daniel Everett spent an hour each night for eight months trying to teach them numbers in Portuguese, with zero success, “It was just a fun time to eat popcorn and watch me write things on the board.”

Though living on a finite planet, the subjects of empire are indoctrinated into the religion of infinite growth, with anything short of that seen as a major disaster. With their gross appetites, they cannot conceive of a no-growth existence, though that was the economy of man for thousands of years. During the age of fossil fuels, now winding down, this infinite growth formula can appear sane and sustainable, but as oil and gas go scarce, its murderous and suicidal nature will become ever starker, like an innocent girl being burnt at the stake.

Most of the planet must slave and starve, so the anointed few can consume, yet even these lucky buyers must themselves slave, commute long hours and pop uppers or downers nonstop to afford that Ipod, Ipad and Xbox. Speaking of which, here’s a still relevant insight from Ben Franklin:

“Having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless.”—from his Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America

With social networking, who needs face-to-face conversations? Slaves to bogus needs and virtual thrills, we have become estranged from the real, with our savage instincts, suppressed, flaring up as conceits or pathologies. Often they explode overseas, as the T-shirt says: TRAVEL TO EXOTIC LANDS, MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE THEN KILL THEM.

In an advanced civilization, a nomadic existence, with its hunting pack, can only be approximated in a war, but instead of hunting animals for subsistence, our boys are gunning down people who are merely trying to prevent us from exploiting and humiliating them. With such a dubious reason to kill or be killed, it’s not surprising that many of these soldiers come back home only to kill themselves.

As I write this, the US is encircling, harassing and sabotaging Iran, yet few Americans seem alarmed that for the sake of oil, again, and increasingly elusive economic growth, their leaders may kill millions and wreck this earth even further, but as their empire convulses and collapses, most Americans will find themselves reduced to the level of those they’ve been annihilating. They will discover that they, too, are just collateral savages.

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Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'

2012-01-13T19:59:00.002-05:00

The Telegraph, 1/10/12:

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.

The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe, who live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.

Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão .

"She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said.

Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group which said it had seen footage of her charred remains.

[...]

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Phenomena Witnessed in Mourning Days (1) Bears Seen on Road in Winter Day

2012-01-13T17:33:00.000-05:00

Pyongyang, January 7 (KCNA) -- At around 12:00 December 23, 2011, workers of the Taehung Youth Hero Mine saw three bears on a road when they were coming back from a mourning site after expressing deep condolences over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il.

The bears, believed to be a mother and cubs, were staying on the road, crying woefully.

Bears usually have a deep sleep in cave or under fallen tree in thick forest in winter days. So it was unusual that they came out to a road in the daytime. Moreover, the road was what the leader had taken for his field guidance tour.

The witnesses said it was as if the animals were wailing over his death. -0-

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I was interviewed by Trang Cao

2012-01-12T11:59:00.003-05:00

in San Francisco on 10/16/2010:

I was interviewed by several San Francisco State students

2012-01-12T11:51:00.005-05:00

in SF in October of 2010:

Indentured Internships

2012-01-10T17:22:00.002-05:00

Dona Furiosa at Scholastic Snake Oil, 1/8/12:

A community college in which I taught some years ago required all of its students to spend a semester in an internship before graduating. The student's major didn't matter: If he or she wanted to get an Associate's degree from the school, he or she had to perform a semester of unpaid labor that, at least theoretically, related to his or her major.

My department's chair, who was one of the most powerful professors in that college, opposed them and was, in fact, spearheading a campaign to eliminate them. The college president and most of the administration were on the other side of that fence. They argued that internships were an "integral part of the college's unique mission," or some such thing. Guess which side won.

Interestingly, that college required internships from the day it opened its doors, more than three decades before I began teaching there. In those days, the college's student population was mostly white, working-class and male; by the time I was teaching in it, there were two female students for every male and the majority of the students were nonwhite and/or spoke a language other than English at home.

Why is the demographic change relevant? Well, at the time the college opened (in 1970, if I recall correctly), most of those working-class male students were studying trades of one kind or another. The founders of the college argued (correctly, I think) that internships served as short apprenticeships of a kind. In fact, they did lead--or turn in--to some of those students' first jobs.

By the time I started teaching in that college, it had mostly abandoned those vocational programs. A few technical programs remained, but the majority of students were studying liberal arts, as they hoped to transfer to four-year colleges.

Perhaps even more to the point, by my time in the college, most of the students were working to pay for their schooling, and a good number of them were supporting themselves, or families, with their jobs. Such students couldn't afford to take time away from their jobs to do unpaid work--especially when they still had to pay for the credits they'd earn from the internship. My department chair--who had what most people would see as a traditional, even elitist, notion of what higher education should be--argued that expecting students to give up their jobs for unpaid work was unfair as well as impractical.

But there was another good reason for ending the internships which none of the faculty or administrators ever mentioned, but which I learned from my students: Too often, the work they did in those internships bore little or no relationship to any work they would actually do in the careers or occupations for which they were preparing themselves--let alone to the theory they were learning in their classrooms. Many of the students were doing nothing more than stocking or filing, or performing menial labor. One of my students was doing such work for a chain that sold CDs, and it was said to relate to his major, which was audio science.

The worst part of this situation, however, may be that employers in many professions want new graduates/job applicants to have done internships. And, if the student isn't getting practical experience from the internship, what is the employer gaining? Free labor, of course. How many people would volunteer their time to an investment bank, chemical manufacturer, advertising agency or any other large, profitable business? Why should anyone be required to do such a thing?

[...]

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Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.

2012-01-07T09:05:00.002-05:00

William Blum on 1/3/12:

"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

"It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.

[...]

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'Every US action in Afghanistan illegal'

2012-01-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

Iran's Press TV, Jan 5, 2012:

Journalist Linh Dinh says imprisoning Afghan “people without trial, without charges is just part of the illegality of the U.S. being” in Afghanistan.

Dinh made the remarks in an interview with Press TV's U.S. Desk on Thursday when asked about a demand made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the U.S. detention center at Bagram Airbase be handed over to Afghan control within a month, along with all Afghan citizens held by the coalition troops across the nation.

He added, “The U.S. presence here is illegal. Every U.S. action in Afghanistan is illegal.”

AT/KK

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Horror and Puppetry

2012-01-06T03:18:00.004-05:00

As published at OpEd News, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 1/6/12:

Meat, water, sock or political, it’s not easy being a puppet. Even before the first word tumbles from your mouth, people crack up, and your face alone can bring down the house. Take this passage from Hamid Karzai, from a 2004 address to a joint session of the American Congress:

Our national army is being trained by American forces, American troops, and wherever we have deployed them the Afghan people have welcomed them. We have initiated the fight against narcotics to save our children, to save your children and children across the world from the evil of addiction to drugs.

It’s amazing the Capitol was still standing after these one liners. Need I remind you that Karzai spent much of his adult life on the payroll of the CIA, the world’s biggest drug gang? And that his brother, since assassinated, was a notorious drug dealer? As for the Afghan people’s love for Karzai’s army, it now depends on four times the number of American troops to keep it from disintegrating or being overrun. The night’s biggest howler, however, came when Karzai related this tale about two American soldiers in Kandahar:

Somebody, a terrorist, threw a grenade at them. The grenade landed in their vehicle. They took the grenade. Instead of throwing it into the street where there were people around them, civilians, these heroic men stuck the grenade under their seat. The grenade exploded. Fortunately, they survived. But they were badly injured. To us, this was also an example of heroism and care for humanity, and we are proud of these two American soldiers. These stories tell a tale of partnership, tell a tale of joint struggle, tell a tale of care and courage and care for humanity.

I’m sorry for being skeptical, but in the long an(n)als of propaganda or warfare, I don’t think anyone has ever claimed that a soldier placed a live grenade under his butts (and jewels). It just doesn’t happen, OK? Even if his mother was standing in that crowded street, I doubt he would shove it right there.

As an American puppet, Karzai had to mouth such absurdities, but these jokes wouldn’t go over too well at home, especially as American atrocities avalanched. When even the New York Times had to report that Afghan children were being blown up just for fun by American chopper crews, Karzai had to protest. He couldn’t follow his supposed outrage to its conclusion, however, by demanding that America quit Afghanistan, because if there were no more American troops in Afghanistan, there would also be no more Karzai… in Afghanistan.

Even Karzai’s own vice-president accused him of being a puppet, so as an American stooge, he had to appear as an uber-Afghan. Thus, the lambskin hat, the bright robe, the tunic. No ordinary suit and tie, Allah forbid, as found on the Syrian President, enemy of the West, or just a discount, JC Penney jacket, as draped on the Iranian leader.

Now, a political puppet can certainly outgrow his role. No longer useful, he can be shoved aside or even killed. Conversely, if he feels that he no longer needs his patron, that he has used this support long enough to consolidate his own power, he can also ditch the patron to stand on his own two feet. This, Karzai hasn’t come close to achieve. Quite the reverse. As recent events have proven, Karzai has become even more superfluous.

Karzai’s only justification for being was that he was an alternative to the Taliban, so when the US started to negotiate with these same Taliban, he went berserk, especially as neither sides bothered to bring him into their discussions. Karzai’s indignation changed nothing, however, so now he’s endorsing this rapprochement between his Yankee masters and his political enemy.

To prove that he’s his own puppet, after all, and a nationalist and humanist, to boot, Karzai’s now demanding that the US returns Bagram Prison to Afghanistan. Citing its atrocious human rights abuses, Karzai considers this complex a violation of Afghan sovereignty. Of course he’s right, but then everything America does in Afghanistan is a violation of Afghan sovereignty, because America shouldn’t be there at all. America’s installation of Hamid Karzai is a violation of Afghan sovereignty.

Since the American invasion, thousands of Afghans have had to suffer indefinite detention without access to a lawyer, often after having been yanked from their home in the middle of the night. Many have been tortured, with some killed in custody. At present, there are over 1,700 prisoners in Bagram. With the National Defense Authorization Act, Americans can now look forward to the same sadistic, inhuman treatment, but who, and how many?

Since there will be no legal presentation or due process, with everything done in secret, you will never know, will you, unless it’s you yourself who are suddenly stripped naked, hung from the ceiling and beaten, forced to endure unbearable cold and to curl up naked on the floor in an empty cell day after day, without any evidence presented whatsoever, with no basis at all for your open-ended suffering but the whims of an empire gone mad.

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With anti-Muslim sentiments running so high,

2012-01-03T12:37:00.003-05:00

I want to cite a wonderful passage by John Steinbeck, written in 1953 about Positano, Italy:

About ten years ago a Moslem came to Positano, liked it and settled. For a time he was self-supporting but gradually he ran out of assets and still he stayed. The town supported him and took care of him. Just as the mayor was their only Communist, this was their only Moslem. They felt that he belonged to them. Finally he died and his only request was that he might be buried with his feet toward Mecca. And this, so Positano thought, was done. Four years later some curious meddler made a discovery. The Moslem had been buried by dead reckoning and either the compass was off or the map was faulty. He had been buried 28 degrees off course. This was outrageous to a seafaring town. The whole population gathered, dug the Moslem up, put him on course and covered him up again.

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Urban goats for organic raw milk in a San Francisco backyard

2012-01-02T18:10:00.000-05:00

California shipping container tiny home and a cargo trailer bedroom

2012-01-02T17:50:00.002-05:00

Fair Companies, 11/28/11:

Lulu is a single mom who'd gone back to school and didn't have the time or interest in working full-time to pay for rent. So when she had to move out of her more conventional home, she decided to move herself and her daughter into a shipping container.

"I think I'm a little claustrophobic so the storage container was a little daunting, but I got the container for free."

DIY container home

With no building experience, Lulu spent just one month cutting windows and a door and installing insulation and a basic kitchen (complete with propane-powered campstove and on-demand water heater).

Then she and her daughter moved into the 8 by 20 foot square foot home, fitting a bed, couch, bookshelf and kitchen cabinets into the 160 square foot box.

A flatbed trailer bedroom addition

When Lulu decided they needed a bit more space, she went from shipping to trucking waste and began to build their bedroom on a used flatbed trailer.

"It's really mostly built like a shed. It's a nice looking shed, but it's really an 8 by 16 shed with windows in it."

Salvaged furniture

Using only recycled building materials- including used floorboards, windows, cabinets, doors, bathtub, toilet and sinks- she built the entire thing for about $4,000 (trailer included).

When you don't have money you just get creative you know and I had to go to the junkyard many times and be like, 'okay, what am I going to do' and be like 'okay, I'll pick that' and ‘how can I convert that into a closet’ and ‘how can I make that a sink’ and ‘how am I going to make that fit’."

Living smaller, working less

Now Lulu and her daughter have 288 square feet, or a bit more if you include the square footage of her daughter’s lofted bed. She says her daughter sometimes loves her little fort and other times she complains, but Lulu doesn’t doubt her decision.

“I mean this was really a choice about, you know, how many hours do we have to our life and how do I want to spend those hours and really about do I want to go and work more than 10, 20, 30 hours a week so that I can pay rent to have a big house so that I can be a healthy normal mom. So this was my choice and she's definitely complained at times, but I also know that we have spent way more hours than I would have if I had to pay rent.”

Lulu didn’t want to add a mortgage to her student loans, but her choice of home was also a reflection of her love of imperfect beauty.

“I showed this to my brother in Argentina and he said, 'you've always like poverty with a lot of style. Always like elegant poor'… although now it's fashionable to be wabi-sabi right?"

Wabi-sabi home

Wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a Japanese aesthetic that values not only imperfection, but it’s also a worldview that appreciates that everything is temporary. Lulu likes living in a home that reflects the ephemeral nature of stuff.

“Material things, all of it is on borrow right, we're all just borrowing stuff... None of this is ours and we try to secure ourselves in these identities like my house, my wife, my car, my children, my career. You know the bigger the more, I'm sure that I am myself and it's like oh no, this house is really a prison and I'm tied to the bank.”

In this video, Lulu- while babysitting 3 other children, besides her own- gives us a tour of her container plus cargo trailer home and talks a bit about her wabi-sabi “elegant poor” style of life.

Hijacking Somalia

2012-01-02T10:17:00.014-05:00

As published at OpEd News, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Intrepid Report and Sri Lankan Guardian, 1/2/12:

Remember Mohamed Osman Mohamud? Of course not, no one does, and I haven’t thought about him myself until yesterday, when Iran’s Press TV solicited my (last) two cents about Somalia.

Somalia, but who’s thinking about Somalia? Yesterday, Americans were burdened with football and a hangover, and in Philadelphia, there was the Mummers Parade, a glorious display of blue collar creativity where plumbers and roofers cross-dressed, played saxophones or banjos, and strutted down Broad Street towards City Hall, the site of Occupy Philly until not that long ago.

Truth be told, the Mummers Parade has gone downhill for a while, ever since its finale was moved into the Convention Center. What was a street carnival became a perfunctory parade followed by an indoors, designed-for-television performance in front of a ticketed audience. Yesterday’s version was particularly listless, with the crowd thin, mirthless, and many floats recycled from years past. Everyone’s budget’s tight. In October, a Mummers Brigade was even busted for renting its clubhouse to a pimp. During the sting operation, undercover cops found nude women walking around, and sex acts performed in the open. Hey, when you’re broke and no longer making stuff, you have to make money with what’s intrinsic... to your person.

Back to Mohamed Osman Mohamud. Just over a year ago, he was lured and entrapped by the FBI, then accused of plotting to bomb a downtown Christmas celebration in Portland. His FBI handler had recorded their conversations, but during the supposedly incriminating one, where he actually stated his desire to bomb and kill fellow Americans, the recording device conveniently malfunctioned. Remember that during the Bin Laden raid, the helmet-mounted video camera also malfunctioned, which explains, supposedly, why there is not even a single image of that most wanted man during the exciting operation, although a much ballyhooed photo, an “instant classic” according to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, was produced of Obama, Clinton and other big shots sitting in the White House Situation Room to watch the assassination in real time. I know it doesn’t add up. It never does. The next time an audio or visual recorder goes AWOL, perhaps the CIA or FBI can blame it on the Chinese, since it’s a given that everything is made in China these days, even if, like Apple or Dell, it carries an American label. Here’s a ready to use, cut and paste headline, “Commies Sabotage Evidence Incriminating Muslim Terrorist.”

The key photo or evidence is never available, but the staged, massaged, doctored or clumsily-spun proofs overflow, not that Americans are paying close attention to anything beside Tim Tebow’s statistics and throwing motion. Seeing our government going through so much trouble to frame a young Somali-American fool, I had to conclude that it was part of the buildup to invade Somalia, and so it is happening, with American drones zapping Somalis from above, and Kenyan, Ethiopian, Ugandan and Burundian troops killing Somalis on the ground.

With Libya out of the way and Iraq temporarily pacified, our military-banking complex is turning its attention to Somalia, but why? As usual, it is spun as a fight against terrorists, as if Somalis are eager to butt heads with a ruthless empire. Attacked, they will fight back, of course, as happened in 1992 during “Operation Restore Hope,” now immortalized and cheesified in the film, Black Hawk Down. But what about missionaries, don’t Somalis also kill missionaries just for the hell of it?

Let’s scrutinize one incident. Last February, it was reported that Somali “pirates” hijacked an American yacht and killed four American missionaries, but even US AFRICA ONLINE, “THE AUTHORITATIVE LINK,” admitted that there was a US Navy warship “shadowing” this yacht as it headed into Somali waters. This warship was close enough to hear gunshots coming from Quest, the Christian boat, so it promptly killed 14 of these “pirates.” So, yes, Somali Muslims are so crazy, they will shoot at Americans approaching on a warship, even with four Christians stuck to the prow as figureheads. I don’t know about you but, personally, I prefer mermaids.

Washington can brand anyone a terrorist now, as it regularly does with Muslims it wants to attack. Targeting Somalia, the US is again evoking al-Qaeda, terrorism and even a desire to help ordinary Somalis, but the reason, as always, is money, which these days usually means access to oil and natural gas. Did you think it was anything else?

Before the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, he signed over nearly two thirds of Somalia to four US oil companies, Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips, so the world’s biggest and baddest pirate, America, has been trying to reclaim this bounty ever since. As in Libya, Washington is fighting a proxy war, with American grunts saved for Iran, it appears. The year has just begun, but already we have blood on our hands, and we will continue to do so until our empire disappears.

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'Somalia, beginning of another Libya'

2012-01-02T05:20:00.003-05:00

Iran's Press TV, 1/2/12:

Interview with Linh Dinh, writer and journalist

The United States has used assassination drones to launch aerial attacks in Somalia where Washington claims it fights terrorism.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia has been without a functioning government since the overthrow of its military dictator in 1991.

Press TV talks with Linh Dinh, a writer and journalist in Philadelphia about the developing situation in Somalia. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Why is this crackdown taking place right now? There have been other military interventions in Somalia since 1993, which have only aggravated the country's unstable internal equilibrium. What makes it different this time around?

Dinh: Looking at the US, you have to conclude that the US is behind this latest push because since 1991 with the overthrow of a US-friendly dictator, the US has been trying to install another government that would be favorable to it.

Just before this ouster Somalia promised two thirds of its territory to four US oil companies, so with that kind of loss the US is trying to get back and has been trying to sabotage and invade Somalia ever since. The kind of chaos in Somalia right now actually works in the US' favor because it gives it justification to come in so that is what it is doing now.

Press TV: What role do you see the al-Shabab fighters playing in all of this?

Dinh: From here (US) all you get is a kind of demonization of al-Shabab and Somalia in general. It's presented as a basket case. Any time the US goes to war or is trying to go to war with a Muslim enemy it accuses it of being affiliated with al-Qaeda. So, I do not know what to make of it. Al-Shabab is again accused of being affiliated with al-Qaeda... you know... so with so much demonization of Somalia and pirates, al-Qaeda...

I want to remind your readers of an incident last Christmas when a Somalia-American was accused of trying to blow up a Christmas tree in Portland, Oregon. This incident was so ridiculously presented with so little physical evidence that at the time I was wondering why the FBI bothered to entrap and make a big case out of this and I concluded that it was preparing the American public for an eventual invasion of Somalia.

And when I was saying this last year there was some ridicule, they were saying that's so far-fetched, but look at what's happening now.

Press TV: Our guest in Cairo talked about how the Somalians are not happy with even regional militaries getting involved - Let's look also at the US factor... We know that the US has stepped up their drone attacks in Somalia, why do you think that is the case?

Dinh: If you look at the two sides in the conflict here, one side is heavily backed by foreign powers including Kenya, Ethiopia and even Ugandan troops and the US is behind all of this. And one side is basically indigenous.

So you have to conclude that the Somali people are behind al-Shabab mostly because otherwise the other side with their massive power wouldn't need to lean on these other countries. I see a parallel with Libya - what happened recently - with the rebels being supported by so many other foreign countries.

I don't know if the US will succeed this time, but with Libya out of the way and Iraq temporarily pacified, it is turning its attention to Somalia.

Press TV:You talked about the oil factor, let's go back to that, you mentioned four major US oil companies and their interest in Somalia - So you think that this is part of this US intervention in Somalia or is it like Washington says that they're basically involved to stop terrorism?

Dinh: You should not take the US seriously when it talks about humanitarian missions. It's never about helping somebody; it's always about money. When you talk about money these days it usually means oil or natural gas, which Somalia has. So, it's all about that and because it's all about that the American press is not mentioning it at all.

SC/GHN

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Slouching Towards 2012

2011-12-30T13:41:00.006-05:00

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams and Intrepid Report, 12/30/11:

For the last two days, Yahoo! has featured an article, “N. Korea alters photo of Kim Jong Il funeral.” Juxtaposing two images, it shows that half a dozen inconsequential figures have been photoshopped out. It is fitting that Yahoo!, a leader in frivolity, is burdening its attentive yahoos with a pointless, carping article masquerading as political expose. This bitch slapping piece of pseudo-journalism is juxtaposed with “Baby Startled by Mom’s Noise,” “Model Pregnant on Runway,” “NASCAR Star Sorry for Tweets” and “Disney’s Women’s ‘Real’ Looks.”

Future observers will be aghast to discover that, as our economy collapses and the country slides into Fascism, our mostly numb and passive population is left to ponder the true identities of cartoon characters and who Jim Carrey is sleeping with. When it comes to putting a population to sleep, North Korea could take a few lessons from the US, and in fact, many Communist states already have. Don’t ban anything, just suffocate people with nonsense, bombard each brain cell relentlessly with so much tedious “entertainment” that it can no longer think straight.

All governments lie, but empires lie even more voluminously because they have a grander fiction to maintain, as well as a larger and more complex audience to pacify, stroke and sucker. The list of facts and events, recent and historical, that have been airbrushed from American history would occupy thousands of Howard Zinns for thousands of years. In their places, the official, unending bullshit. Wonders of wonders, tallest buildings collapsing at free fall speed, one without being hit by anything, its demise announced before the fact even. Or a murder without corpse of a most wanted target, with the “heroic” hit team conveniently packed into a helicopter, then killed. Nothing is ever explained, because nothing needs to be explained to a well-opiated audience.

I have contended that a hidden agenda of the Occupy Movement’s tent cities, now mostly gone, is to remove oneself from a normal, domesticated environment, with its attendant, nonstop media brainwashing via television, computer and other electronic gadgets. Freed from these insidious and poisonous mediators, one could discover other human beings, one’s neighbors, and oneself, at last. It wasn’t just a sacrifice to endure the elements and poor sanitation to feel solidarity and community. It was also an attraction, an atavistic yearning to see, hear and feel directly, and to jettison all of the soft yet stubborn, plugged-in shackles. As a sign at Zuccotti Park said so well, “FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I FEEL AT HOME.”

Many inhabitants of these encampments had no other homes, however, so when these tents were cleared out, they had to scramble. In Philadelphia, a group relocated to an out of the way, vacant lot in a distressed neighborhood, then issued this plea to be left alone, “We are not here protesting or to make a statement, we’re homeless. We are sick of being forced to exist alone, sick of being told that shelters, which are not tolerable living facilities for sober people, are an adequate alternative to being “allowed”, by the government, to work, live and share together to create for ourselves […] ”

Forced by necessity or motivated by activism and desire, these tent dwellers will only multiply in the years ahead. Becoming a tribe unto themselves, they will reclaim entire swaths of America. Squatting on land, they will also get a chance to occupy their own minds. There, they will discover that the tucked away answers are already many degrees wiser and saner than the drivel being pumped out daily by their masters of murderous greed and war.

So far, our overlords have not been overly alarmed by our budding awakening and rebellion. Time Magazine even gave the movement a pat on the head, with a chuckling reminder that it took the Civil Rights Movement a decade to achieve tangible results, but we don’t have ten years to chip and dally away. The bankers are more entrenched than ever, with the next POTUS, their loyal servant, no different than the last, and don’t bet on Ron Paul being allowed to occupy that ceremonial seat.

The Pentagon’s core budget, as submitted by Peace Laureate Obama, is the biggest ever, though hefty cuts have been applied to Overseas Contingency Operations. Whenever another war starts, however, and who knows how many more we’ll see in 2012, the cash spigot will spill as madly as the blood. Trust me.

It’s another year coming, but I doubt that most Americans feel any sense of renewal. In spite of reassuring or silly headlines, pervasive dread is in the air. The election year will give the Occupy Movement energy and focus, but unless it can sharpen its message and allow exceptional individuals already in its midst to emerge as spokesmen and leaders, it will continue to accomplish merely minor, symbolic victories, as their opponents continue to kill, loot and, yes, laugh in their faces.

The you are a leader, I am a leader mantra is patently nonsense, because it takes a highly intelligent, charismatic and forceful figure to galvanize and inspire. A leader must earn his status, and when he has, lesser voices will naturally defer, and if he turns out to be a fraud, he should be chucked aside. Faced with a monomaniacal, brutal and well organized enemy, we cannot just counter with a horizontal position, because they will gladly accommodate this inclination.

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A PhD In...

2011-12-25T07:33:00.002-05:00

Scholastic Snake Oil, 12/24/11:

The horrendous debts students incur in going to law, medical or most graduate schools--and almost any non-prestigious private college or university--are, along with the dismal prospects for employment, reason enough to dissuade people from going to those schools. If you're one of those people who thinks "you can't put a price" on education or gains self-esteem through titles, I'll try to explain another reason why incurring such debts--let alone encouraging someone else to incur them--is immoral.

I was just reading about PhD programs in Nursing. Now, maybe I'm late in coming to this party, but I wasn't aware of them until just recently. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given some of the other programs that have developed under the current social, legal and economic climate.

York College, my former employer (It feels good to say that!), has bachelors' degree programs in a number of areas that come under the appelation of "health professions." They include traditional programs like ones to train nurses, physicans' assistants, physical therapists and occupational therapists. While most students attend them in the hope of working in one of those areas upon graduation, the college (and others) exert--and the students feel, from various sources-- pressure to pursue higher degrees in those areas.

Part of the explanation of this is simple: Like any other college (which includes nearly all of them), York and its parent university (City University of New York), is part of what some of us are calling the Financial-Educational Complex. The FEC wants students to stay in school for as long as possible because, for most students, more time in school translates into more and bigger loans.

[...]

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Christmas Gifts for a Collapsing America

2011-12-21T14:10:00.006-05:00

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 12/21/11:

Homelessness Starter Kit, $29.99. For the myriad who were hustled by a bank into an impossible mortgage, then foreclosed upon. For the long-retired yet taxed right out of their own homes. For recent college grads who are jobless, of course, and too dispirited to return to their parents. Or for those who were simply laid off for no good reason and are now roofless, here’s a perfect gift for this holiday: Two pieces of cardboard, one to lie on, and one to create a begging and/or protest sign. As a bonus, we’ll include a list of suggested messages, completely free: WE ARE THE 99%, PREGNANT AND HUNGRY, I HAD A STROKE, I AM A WAR VETERAN, OCCUPY EVERYTHING DEMAND NOTHING, etc. For a Magic Marker, please add $1.99.

Military Contractor Gear, $499.95. For that aspiring mercenary in your family, now he can get off his couch and terrorize terrorists, without leaving his parents’ home even. Armed with a knife, grenades, M9 pistol and the latest Kalashnikov, the world’s most reliable infantry rifle, not that toy gun, M-16 piece of crap, your hired soldier can foray into his backyard and blast nasty holes into his dog, cat and lawn furniture. Emboldened, he can venture into adjacent properties and kick down his neighbors’ doors in the middle of the night and splatter them if they resist, or even if they submit. There’s no need for your deranged warrior to be bummed out over the end of the Iraq War, since he can bring all of that exciting carnage home. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out later! Bored with nightly mayhem, your military contractor can even step on an improvised explosive device (at $79.95 extra, with only one needed, trust us) and feel the thrills of having his lower half, at least, shredded. Real life hired-guns don’t get Purple Heart, but we’ll ship you an authentic looking one, at $4.99 extra.

Big Sis Sex Doll, $65.99, with $9.99 for handcuffs and $29.99 for TSA uniform. Tired of Janet Napolitano rummaging in your pants? Now you can get into hers. This is no generic, almost life-size dummy with the usual, traditional orifices in more or less the right places, or even that rarified, glasses-wearing and Emily Dickinson-quoting vinyl girlfriend. No, Siree! This is the Secretary of Homeland Security in face and person, her unique body shape extraordinarily rendered by a world-renown, Chinese artisan, a classmate and rival, no less, to the sculptor of that hulking and fug ugly MLK statue on the Washington Mall. Spiffy in your TSA outfit, you can intone on your very first date, “This is merely procedural, ma’am,” as you legally insert your creepy claws inside Janet’s business pants and fondle her pubis, buttocks and more, with no foreplay whatsoever. Why waste time? Like any sane person, she will squirm, grimace or even curse in a realistic, battery operated shriek, AA cells not included, but should Janet resist your patriotic, post 9-11 molestation, you can harden your voice and growl, “I’ll send you to Guantanamo, bitch!” before you handcuff her and get really funky. Fun over, you can waterboard Janet’s face and gently wash her body with warm water and soap. Deflated, she is compact enough to store in a back pocket until the next airport patdown and/or enhanced interrogation technique session.

Home Slot Machine, $199.99. With offshoring, American factories are crumbling. Once the makers of high-quality merchandises, Americans now merely service or hustle each other, whether in investment banking, at street corner shell games or in casinos. Forty-one states now boast glittery gambling emporia, with these springing up even in an old church or a disused steel plant. It’s not farfetched to imagine a day when there are poker, blackjack, roulette and mahjong tables near each home. They’ll have to be within walking distance, of course, since Americans will be too broke to afford car or gasoline. Hell, it is probable that there will be a slot machine installed outside each dwelling, even of tarp or cardboard, where the mailbox used to be. The government won’t deliver your letters, since the postal service has long gone out of business, but it will stop by regularly to collect coins from your personal gambling contraption. Why not leap into the future, my friend, by having a slot machine right now in your living room? If you still have a living room, that is. Day or night, you can compulsively stuff your dwindling income into this cartoon-decorated steel box, then crank its handle without consequence. As in a real casino, your money will be magically transferred to unseen persons elsewhere. This mindless toy is tough enough to endure repeated kicks, bangs or even an atomic bomb, without showing any of your disappeared moolah. With each $200 spent, however, it will spit out a 25-cent coupon, to be spent at the supermarket of your choice.

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Ron Paul opposed to 'Pentagon, banking cartel'

2011-12-19T16:48:00.001-05:00

Iran's Press TV, 12/19/11:

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is now leading the pack in Iowa as Newt Gingrich's support fades. But some analysts believe he won't be allowed to win the presidential race.

“Because of his strong opposition to the Pentagon and the banking cartel, I cannot conceive of him being allowed to win the presidency, said Linh Dinh, poet and writer in Philadelphia.

“It is impossible for me to see him as next president… because of the control of the media and the voting machine,” said Linh Dinh.

“He is always opposed to U.S. imperialism abroad and the Federal Reserve which is the criminal banking cartel, those are two key issues resonating among many Americans.”

HA/HJ

'US makes money by waging wars'

2011-12-05T16:14:00.002-05:00

Ray McGovern is also on this show. Iran Press TV, 12/4/11:

A political observer believes that one of the main objectives of the United States in waging wars around the world and especially in the Middle East region is to do business and make money.

During the latest attack by NATO helicopters and fighter jets, 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed on their military outpost.

Pakistani people are demanding a tough response by their government towards the attack.

So far, Pakistan has boycotted an international conference on Afghanistan in Germany and has demanded that the US leaves an airbase in the country to be closed.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Linh Dinh, a journalist in Philadelphia, to ask his opinions on the issue.Following is the transcription of the interview.

Press TV: If it is that easy, because of course the United States has said that it was a mistake, and if it is that easy to mistaken the Pakistani military outpost for militants, what is that say, first of all, about the American military intelligence? Also what does it mean for civilians then, who could be in the area?

Dinh: Well, there have been so many attacks and this is only the latest outrage. The premise of the US being in Afghanistan or intruding into Pakistan is preposterous to begin with. The US justification for attacking people in Pakistan is that these so-called terrorists are ignoring the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the only people who do not belong there are the Americans. You know, the US does not respect any border. So it is farcical that it would accuse anyone. You know, the Pashtuns have been there for centuries. Of course, the US can cross over any border in the world.

If you go there, (you see) basically the same people basically on both sides. So the Pashtuns have every rights to be in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is the Americans who should leave.

Press TV: Mr. Dinh, is there any difference between the government in Islamabad and the Pakistani people as far as the way that they look at the United States?

Now Mr. Pirzada (the other guest in the show) is saying that the people are very savvy and understand what is going on, but do you think that the government in Islamabad is really as anti-Washington policy as they are appearing these days?

Dinh: There have been protests from both Islamabad and the Pakistani people and apparently these protests have had little effects because the drone attacks have only intensified.

As you can see from the latest incident, this is the most serious incident, yet. So these half-hearted expressions of regrets and apologies are in a sense meaningless because you have to wonder whether Washington wants to intensify this crisis.

It seems that Washington is always looking for a new enemy, for a new war to fight. Right now, it is threatening three countries simultaneously: Iran, Iraq and Syria and occasionally it has attacked Somalia.

So, you know, one may make a remark that these countries happen to be Muslim. And you may be surprised why would Washington embarrass one of its key allies, but Washington has always embarrassed its allies whenever it feels like it.

So I am not sure whether this crisis would go away. I am afraid it might even get worse because war is how Washington does business and it is how it makes money.

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Endless Needless Deaths

2011-12-05T09:40:00.007-05:00

As published on Common Dreams, OpEd News, CounterPunch and Dissident Voice, 12/5/11:

Bush started shooting into Pakistan in 2004, and Obama has continued this bloody practice, culminating recently in the massacre of 24 Pakistani soldiers, with 13 more wounded. The attack lasted for hours, yet afterward, the US claimed it was all an accident. Hillary Clinton expressed regrets, Obama offered condolences, but no American official apologized, since the US doesn’t do apologies. Accusing Pakistan of supporting terrorists who are killing Americans, McCain threatened to cut back aids. As for those Pakistani soldiers, they were regrettably killed in “the fog of war.”

Let’s try to clear up this fogged up situation by examining who’s killing whom, and why. The US has been butchering Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistani border, and the Pashtuns are fighting back because that’s their homeland. The Pashtuns have been living between the Hindu Kush and the Indus River since at least the 3rd Century, so one can reasonably say that they belong there, at least much more so than some guy from Intercourse, PA, or Walla Walla, Washington.

Go to most borders worldwide and, surprise, surprise, you’ll find more or less the same people living on both sides, often speaking the same language. This is also true in the US. In 2006, I drove 100 miles on route Farm to Market 170 in Texas, hugging the Rio Grande, and I didn’t see a single Anglo face in three hours. (Granted, there weren’t that many faces to be seen.) At Candelaria, population 75, I crossed a brief footbridge into Mexico, then returned. Everybody else was doing it. Here, Rio Bravo was barely a trickle, so people on either side saw each other as neighbors, with the border an irrelevant fiction. To a Pashtun, then, the Durand Line, named after a British Foreign Secretary, is even more absurd.

Of course, I’m not advocating the abolishment of international borders, since large and subtle differences between populations require that they organize their societies differently, with demarcations between them, but it is ironic that the United States is chafing at the Pashtuns for crossing an arbitrary line, when America is the world’s most persistent and violent violator of international borders. As in many other cases, the only one who doesn’t belong on the map is you, Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam doesn’t know how to spell or pronounce sovereignty, at least when not talking about Israel. Sovranty. Sofarenty. Sufferenty.

Any Pashtun killed by American bombs or drones is a Pashtun wrongly murdered, be him a “militant,” as the Pentagon consistently charge, or more likely just a farmer or even a child. Imagine drones hovering over your hometown and zapping people at will, with the murdered victims being branded “insurgents.” If a Pashtun fights back, it’s because he has too. Wouldn’t you? If he dies fighting, at least he dies with honor, fighting for a just cause. The same cannot be said for American soldiers in Afghanistan. Pat Tillman realized this, but one of his own wasted him before he could tell the world about his awakening.

As a client state of America, Pakistan is being asked to kill its own citizens, Pashtuns and others, as a contribution to the petroleum fueled, natural gaseous, opium hazy and totally fogged up War on Terror. Doing Washington’s bidding, Pakistan has lost nearly 4,000 soldiers, but these needless deaths aren’t enough to appease the Washington masters of war. For brownnosing, Pakistan gets no pat on the head, but is being demonized as an “ally from hell,” to quote from the Atlantic.

With the notable exceptions of Israel and England, American allies are often betrayed. Pakistan’s being blamed for America’s ongoing troubles in Afghanistan, and for harboring Bin Laden until that much ballyhooed yet substanceless assassination, but all of the acrimonies and needless deaths could have been avoided had America never planted its XXXL rump on that corner of the world.

Using Bin Laden as a pretext, America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and a decade later, it is still there, though its bogeyman is long gone. America never runs out of enemies, however, for it can always generate them anew, with either its bombs and guns, or through its jingoistic media. Along with Iran and Syria, Pakistan, supposedly an ally, has become a target.

Washington will always find new wars to fight and more people to kill, since that is the only task it is good at anymore. It does not know how to do anything else. Peace is not in its vocabulary, since war is how Washington and Wall Street make their money.

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PHILADELPHIA: Statement from the Homeless Encampment at Richmond and Cumberland

2011-12-01T16:38:00.001-05:00

The following statement, from people at the Homeless Encampment at Richmond and Cumberland, was sent to the mayor, Daily News, and elected representatives. They are facing eviction today.

We are not here protesting or to make a statement, We’re homeless. We are sick of being forced to exist alone, sick of being told that shelters, which are not tolerable living facilities for sober people, are an adequate alternative to being “allowed”, by the government, to work, live and share together to create for ourselves, with much less help and expense than the government can do anything, opportunities to provide for ourselves that which our troubled economy cannot.

Philadelphia has about 4,000 homeless people and 40,000 empty dwelling units, but, apparently, unless the wealthy can profit by our occupying these dwellings, they would rather see us alone, with our possessions if not stolen by regular criminals, ‘confiscated’ by police, since we have no place to store anything we can’t carry and are not allowed to congregate to watch one another’s belongings.

To have poverty forced upon us in the land of plenty, is no longer a viable solution, if in fact, it ever was.

I know how to grow food, build structures, build communities from the fragmented elements that current policy, make craftwork to supply cash for what it’s needed for, etc. My friends know how to do the things I don’t. Those who ‘have’ seem satisfied to make sure I don’t ‘have’ opportunity to gather to have a safe place to sleep, let alone organize to provide for our basic needs.

We need the use of at least one abandoned structure, if the law requires it to have water and electricity, the Obama administration provided $21 million dollars to help the homeless, this is a drop in the bucket.

We need an outdoor long term camping area, close enough to mass transit for us to meet medical, legal, pension and benefits and other needs, and large and separated enough to not disturb our neighbors and start to grow our own food and do art and craftwork, feed one another and see to one another’s daily needs.

In this sort of camp, people who get along can meet one another and we can help one another and be helped by those in the community who believe in, rather than merely preach, compassion, to get long term housing, use our varied skills to rehabilitate abandoned structures as we rehabilitate ourselves and work toward the caring, loving society that many believe we will make happen.

There are many caring people in Philadelphia, whose deeds as well as their words, demonstrate the belief that the present “crisis” is in fact and opportunity to create a land of “Liberty and Justice for All” rather than a land of “Just Us”.

November 30, 2011

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Another email to a youngish poet

2011-11-26T12:19:00.004-05:00

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I fully realize that it's easy for me to criticize when I'm not writing poems myself, because when I write, it's mostly like wading through a self-generated disaster zone. Poetry is mostly false starts and abortions, but you wouldn't know it from the self-congratulatory chatter of the poetry crowd.

One more thought: the workshop format is obviously bullshit, since a poem cannot be audience tested or written by a commitee. The word itself, workshop, is ridiculous as applied to poetry. If this entire system isn't unraveling, I'm sure the next evolution in the poetry writing racket will be assembly line poetry:

Good at metaphor but clueless at syntax? Don't worry, we'll plug you into the right slot at the South Dakota/Oracle/Beige University MFA Poetry Assembly Line System. We'll "teach" you how to generate endless bizarre yet apt metaphors while never having to worry about periods, commas, clauses or any of that other grammatical bullshit. We already know you can't even compose a coherent email, but don't worry, you'll be a certified poet soon enough, with your own well-linked blog. Bank loans readily available for all qualified or unqualified sensitive and intellectually ravenous, sort of, suckers.

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Email to a youngish poet

2011-11-24T21:37:00.003-05:00

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Your new poem is tight, smart, without any false notes, and the title is fantastic, but, but, but, you're basically writing in the Ashbery mode. This is no fault of your own, since Ashbery casts a huge shadow across contemporary American poetry. That wry, intelligent noodling, with just a touch of pathos, is showing up everywhere, and not many people can do them well even, as you have managed to pull off here. Still, you must move beyond this. To take real chances, you must lose yourself, freak out a little, become wild yet still in charge. I know that sounds oxymoronic, but that's what it takes to luck into a super rare, truly authentic poem. When I saw Anne Boyer in Philly recently, I said to her, "I'm preparing to write my first poem." And who knows, maybe I won't ever get there, so welcome to the gestation club, motherfucker! Technically, I'd say pay more attention to sentence lengths, try to vary them more. Also, be more conscious of mixing dictions and modes, as in be a more versatile ventriloquist, and speak from all of your orifices, even those you didn't know exist.

I haven't been wearing my poetry cap, but I hope the above still makes some sense.

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Sharing the Turkey

2011-11-24T15:36:00.010-05:00

A published in OpEd News, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report, with a shorter version in the Guardian, 11/24/11:

Thanksgiving is the occasion or requirement, not necessarily welcome, that one eats with many other people, while looking at their faces even. As a contemporary American, I take many meals alone while staring at a medium, which in my case is the computer and, before that, the newspaper. I eat in silence and darkness. It hasn’t always been this way.

My first Thanksgiving, I had just turned twelve and had been in the US all of six months. I was living in Tacoma with my father, kid brother and a woman who would morph into my stepmother. Even then, we hated each other. For $150 a month, we had a one bedroom apartment not far from my school, McKinley Elementary. My brother and I slept in sleeping bags on the living room floor, with our treasure a tiny black and white TV, a tutor in American culture and English.

Each afternoon, the magic box would usher in Bugs Bunny, then Shirley Temple or the Three Stooges, to be followed by Jimmy Snuka. No more dismal or heroic singing, as on Vietnamese television. No more body counts or political speeches. This is America, boys and girls, where everything is goofy and fun!

Though they hardly knew us, the people next door generously invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn’t a family but two young couples, with the men bearded. We ate on the floor. I had just learned, “May I,” so I tried out, “May I have the corn, please.” This linguistic feeler elicited a compliment from one of our sweet hosts, which flattered me. In Vietnam, I had studied French from kindergarten onward, but since I had no need to speak it, I never owned any French, not even a mouthful, yet here I was, already careening forward with a new, reckless tongue that I wagged about like some lashing weapon.

For whatever it’s worth, it’s true that Americans do say “thank you” and “sorry” quite readily, at least much more often than Vietnamese, and I’m only talking about ordinary people, of course, not any official. The American government should apologize constantly, but never does. Better yet, it should cease and desist from all the looting, carnage and destruction that require that it gets on its knees and begs forgiveness from man, gods and gaia.

So what am I suggesting? I’m saying that Americans are for most part kind and generous, unlike its murderous government. I’m claiming that our 99% are mostly fair and decent, unlike the 1% that rule and represent us. Working against humanity and country, this 1% bring shame and dishonor to our name.

In 1976, my father decided that we should join my aunt in Houston, so he drove us 2,400 miles in his Chevette, the cheapest on the market. In the middle of the Sonoran desert, this crappy car died, so strangers had to come to our aid. This was before the cell phone, so a passing motorist had to use a payphone to call for a tow truck, and, even more incredibly, a mechanic at this garage invited us into his home for the night, since we couldn’t afford a motel. My brother and I played with his two boys, and his wife made burgers for us all. My father did give them some money, maybe $20, as a token thank you, but their kindness and graciousness were truly marvelous, though at the time, as a kid, I didn’t fully appreciate it.

In 1983, during my second year in art school, I had another memorable Thanksgiving dinner, this time at the home of a professor, Boris Putterman. I had started out calling Boris “Mr. Putterman,” but he insisted on “Boris,” which is the informal, American way. Boris liked my progress as a young painter, and also my confidence, which later he would discover, to his dismay if not disgust, to be an unwarranted cockiness. Stoked by a combustion of social, intellectual, alcoholic, dope, speed and sexual awakenings, I even declared to Boris, “You should never say sorry!” His response, “Where did you get that?! You should always say you’re sorry.” Life would kick my ass good upon leaving school, however, so I got my comeuppance in ample dosage. Whether in an individual or nation, hubris is a distortion that demands correction, for sooner or later the proper perspective and proportion will reassert themselves.

It’s strange but from all the conversations of that night at Boris’, the only bit that’s stuck in my mind was uttered by his mother, “I don’t see how people can eat chicken wings. There’s no meat on them!” Instead of fading, this will only mean more and more in the years ahead, and not just to me but nearly all Americans, so be thankful for what’s left, but unless some are made to feel sorry very soon, the rest of us will be kicked in the ass.

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Banks, Pentagon and Academic Pusillanimousness

2011-11-19T10:37:00.006-05:00

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 11/19/11:

“I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy.”—GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain

Not everything, mind you, but anything, which would put him on par with the dumbest American living under the heaviest and mossiest rock. Hell, he's running neck to neck with that boulder. Though Cain knows nothing, he has enough political sense to bluster, “If you mess with Israel you're messing with the United States of America.”

That’s been the mantra in Washington, Wall Street and Madison Avenue. Iran knows this as well, and that’s why it is, in all likelihood, trying to develop the nuclear bomb, not to strike New York or Washington, but Tel Aviv. It only makes sense, since that’s the only deterrence it has against an American invasion.

Clueless Cain thinks the Iranians have warships off our shore, but it’s America who has Iran surrounded, with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Fifth Fleet also operates from Bahrain, a mere 120 miles from the Iranian coast. Washington has been itching for a fight with Iran ever since it had the (Muslim) balls to depose the CIA-installed Shah and kept 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran is also the largest Islamic country to openly defy the United States. By the way, it also has a lot of oil and natural gas.

Threatened for three decades by the biggest empire on earth, what can Iran do but strive to aim a nuclear warhead at Israel? You mess with us, we’ll kill your daddy!

A few days ago, I was a guest on Iran’s Press TV to talk about the anti-Wall Street protest. On the same show was Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. A year after his book came out, Kovel was fired from Bard College. Seeing a causal effect, Kovel issued a statement charging that he was terminated because of “differences between [himself] and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism.” At that time, I was teaching creative writing at Bard, so I tried to drag this controversy onto its listserv, but no one, absolutely no one, responded, to my astonishment. Hey, a college teaching job isn’t easy to come by, so why rock the boat? President Botstein will kick your ass. A few months earlier, the same listserv was orgasmic with cheering for Obama, but, then again, nearly all of the American left were. Ah, how idyllic and delightful it is to be a tenured liberal in the waning days of empire!

2011, at another supposedly radical bastion, Berkeley, cops wacked students with the chancellor’s approval. Protesting outrageous tuition hikes, these students correctly blamed banks for their university’s and state’s budget crises, but banks and universities have been in cahoots for a long time now. Schools jack up rates, knowing they can send students to banks for loans, but no matter what one’s major these days, the jobs are simply not there, but one’s debts are, for life!

Is it a surprise, then, that so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are recent college graduates? Spat out by the system, they know that they’ve been had. Like investment banks, American colleges are also purveyors of ponzi schemes. Beaten to the ground, flattened, these protesters are suspicious of all hierarchies, of all pyramids, and that’s why they’ve refused to elevate leaders or even to prioritize key issues, but these reluctances must be overcome, I think, for this movement to move forward.

Its success, so far, can be attributed to two crucial decisions, to have an open-ended occupation, not a one-day march, and to target Wall Street. This movement, then, is about the money manipulators' looting and corruption, so it’s important that the public be educated and constantly reminded about the abuses of the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the rest of the banking cartel.

As Americans endure actual or symbolic homelessness across this land, their government is hankering for yet another war. To distract attention from problems at home, the US wants to attack Iran and/or Syria. This is madness, certainly, but not to the war profiteers. Having bought off all of our politicians, these money masters own the Pentagon and its obscene budget that eats up half of our tax money.

When Michael Avery of Suffolk University pointed out, in a leaked email, that it was irrational to support troops sent overseas by a war-prone country to kill, he was met with considerable abuse and hostility. Unsurprisingly, his school’s president quickly distanced himself from Avery’s lucid remarks by saying that he himself was sending a care package to the troops. So, yes, if you don’t die by the time this box arrives, have a bar of chocolate on me!

How can anyone in his right mind not be against corruption, since corruption is just stealing public money, but unfortunately, many of the 99% are still misled into supporting our military. They cannot see that the Pentagon, like the banks, is also a nexus of corruption, that its main task is not to defend our republic but to funnel money from the 99% to the 1%.

Do not lose sight that our main battle is against the corrupt banking cartel and equally corrupt Pentagon. Much of our financial, political, social and ecological ills can be traced to these monsters. Winter is coming. Time is running out.

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'The Pentagon is as corrupt as Banks'

2011-11-15T11:41:00.003-05:00

Iran's Press TV, recorded live yesterday:

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the US should also place some focus on the Pentagon, as it is as corrupt as the banks that caused the country's financial crisis, an analyst says.

Press TV has interviewed with Linh Dinh, an author from Philadelphia, to further discuss the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of two additional guests, Sara Flounders as well as Joel Kovel.

What follows is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: More Americans are losing their homes we know; a recent Gallup poll finds that only forty-four and a half percent of Americans adults received health insurance from an employer in the third quarter of 2011.

Another recent Gallup poll report shows that twenty percent, or over sixty million of them, were not able to bring food for themselves, or their families over the past year.

Now against this backdrop, what do you think will be the future of the protester movement against the economic, social, and the political inequalities?

Dinh: Just like you are saying, many Americans are directly threatened by this collapsing economy.

The situation is so precarious that they can be fired tomorrow; they are making less money. So the occupy movement is a kind of symbolic homelessness, so these people are living so poorly, and are camping out in the hearts of American cities, to vividly demonstrate to the rest of the world, that they are just a step away from being homeless.

And what's interesting is that the actual homeless people are moving into these camps. So there's a blurring of the real homeless people and those who are for now only symbolically homeless.

But what's interesting is that, if you think about it, every homeless person is already a protester, whether he has a sign in front of him or not.

Because in a country that wastes so much money on the Pentagon, on the military, there shouldn't be that much homelessness. In every American city, in every American town you can see the homeless people.

So these tent cities will only grow as the economy collapses further.

Press TV: The Republican presidential hopefuls had a foreign policy debate the other day, and in that debate, all of them expect for Ron Paul, focused on attacking Iran, and waging another war.

With twenty percent of Americans not having enough money to buy food, why do you think there is so much talk about another war, when of course one of the major demands that has been voiced in these protest movement has been an end to the wars that the US is currently engaged in.

Dinh: Sure the government wants to attack yet another country, to distract attention from problems at home.

And I see a big problem here, you know that this movement is called the ninety-nine percent, and it is that, but there is a kind of a disagreement between the conservative Americans and the liberal Americans.

The conservative Americans are also against corruption but they support the Pentagon, they support the US military foreign policy, whereas the liberals are against corruption but against the Pentagon. So there has to be a kind of consensus reached, in that Americans have to be persuaded, to understand that US imperialism is not just bad for Iran, or Iraq or Libya or so many other countries, it's also bad for the USA.

We are not just killing other people, we are killing ourselves.

So how can you not be against corruption? Corruption is just stealing money. I mean you, how can you be for corruption? But so many Americans are still misled into supporting our military.

Because they are persuaded somehow, that a country like Iran is a threat to the USA. Whereas it's exactly the opposite, the USA is threatening Iran. Iran is not a threat to USA at all.

So I think that hopefully in the future, people can be persuaded to realize that the Pentagon is as bad as the banks, a major source of corruption.

Press TV: Speaking about this major financial and political overhaul in the United States, well one of the demands voiced by the protesters is being against what they call the military-industrial-complex for instance and the military-banking relationship.

If you were to say what is at stake now for the US, is it corporation, is it more about Wall Street, is this military-banking relationship, or is it capitalism as a whole?

Dinh: Well, basically it's corruption; it is the criminal banks which are represented by the Federal Reserve which has a power to generate money out of nothing.

And then the Pentagon, which is this major source of corruption. But anyway, I agree with Joel too, with the ecological issue, in that capitalism is predicated on growth, and I think growth is over. And the United States has to come to terms with that.

In that this country cannot grow anymore, because there are ecological limits, and that is something that most of the public are not aware of.

And there is a huge challenge of how to manage, not growth, but contraction. And that is a very difficult issue and no one is addressing it at the moment.

PM/AZ

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2011-11-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

PSU protesters blindly ignore real victims

2011-11-12T01:52:00.001-05:00

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Unless they're prepping for that extra-credit question on a philosophy midterm, most college students don't do a whole lot of thinking about morality.

Maintaining a decent grade point average while navigating the more libidinous temptations of college life is about as deep as it gets. It has been books-versus-bacchanalia ever since the days of Socrates.

Students usually learn a university's definition of morality sometime near the end of first semester of their freshman year. That's when bills are sent to their parents warning that their young scholars won't be allowed to enroll the following semester unless the next installment of the shakedown known as college tuition is remitted before sundown.

At least colleges and universities are honest about being cash-hungry businesses. The extent that they are also idea factories and molders of morality ranks far down on their hierarchy of values.

Contrary to society's most sentimental myths about higher education, colleges aren't set up to instill students with a conscience. Those who arrive on campus without fully functioning empathy chips aren't likely to develop a taste for moral inquiry by sitting in a lecture hall or by playing beer pong.

That's why no one should be shocked by what happened at State College when news spread Wednesday night that longtime head football coach Joe Paterno had been fired. Up to 5,000 young people took to the streets around Penn State University for several hours to protest the sacking of their beloved "JoePa" and to vent their rage at the trustees who denied their hero the dignity of going out on his own terms.

After flipping over a TV news van, the students made it clear that larger questions of morality in what is easily the biggest scandal in the school's history were beside the point.

Petulant chants of "One more game" and "We want JoePa" united the crowd in a bond of youthful stupidity and shortsightedness that is only possible when mom and dad are paying the bills.

The only thing more naive than the misplaced chants of support for an 84-year-old football coach is the question indignant viewers asked while watching the riot footage on cable news: What exactly are they teaching those kids at Penn State?

Isn't it obvious? Penn State isn't teaching the kids anything they didn't already learn at home. It isn't the university's job to inculcate kids with values such as empathy for young rape victims. That's a moral blind spot that represents the absence of good parenting, not bad teaching at Penn State.

Those protesters arrived at the school fully formed and with the capacity for uncritical worship of a football coach whose two-syllable nickname invokes the same assumptions of omnipotence as Yahweh.

Although the thousands in the streets were an impressive turnout, they represented a minority of the school's student body. The majority of students stayed in their cubicles and dorm rooms, perhaps embarrassed by the lemming-like behavior of their classmates chanting the name of a man who enabled former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky by not reporting what he knew or suspected of sexual abuse allegations to police a decade ago.

The kids who marched through the night at State College confronting pepper spray-wielding police in riot gear didn't ask themselves the nature of what they were marching for. They didn't engage in dorm room rap sessions about the morality of their protest. No one wondered if any of the alleged victims of their beloved coach's former assistant was within earshot.

What would the eight victims of child sex abuse described in the grand jury's presentment think of the crowd if they saw it? Would they feel like scapegoats, or would they realize, sadly, that their pain is a non-issue to those who cried over JoePa's firing? Where do these eight victims fit in the morality of the crowd that turned out to protest?

If one tries to imagine other issues that could drive thousands of Penn State students to the street, you would probably come up empty. A decade of war abroad doesn't generate such passions, nor would a threat of tuition hikes.

In Happy Valley, it only takes the outcome of a football game, or the dethroning of the campus' resident god to get those kind of numbers. That's the only incontestable morality the university has cultivated over the four decades of Mr. Paterno's reign.

Lately, I've been thinking about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. He served nearly two years in prison for running a dog-fighting ring and was only grudgingly allowed back in the NFL. Among the Penn State protesters, there was probably more sympathy for Mr. Vick's dogs than for the children victimized in this case.

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Penn State and Berkeley: A Tale of Two Protests

2011-11-11T01:48:00.000-05:00

Dave Zirin

Last night, two proud universities saw student demonstrations that spiraled into violence. On the campus of Penn State University in State College Pennsylvania, several hundred students rioted in anger after the firing of legendary 84-year-old head football coach Joe Paterno. At the University of California at Berkeley, 1,000 students, part of the Occupy USA movement, attempted to maintain their protest encampment in the face of police orders to clear them out.

At Penn State, students overturned a media truck, hit an ESPN reporter in the head with a rock and made every effort at arson, attempting to set aflame the very heart of their campus. They raised their fists in defense of a man fired for allegedly covering up the actions of a revered assistant who doubled as a serial child rapist. The almost entirely male student mob was given the space by police to seethe and destroy without restraint.

[...]

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With two more days to go,

2011-11-09T19:36:00.003-05:00

I've managed to have $3,350 in pledges at my fundraising at United States Artists, but if I don't meet my goal of $5,000 by 11:59PM of November 11th, 2011, I'll get nothing! My appeal:

Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate

2011-11-08T17:15:00.001-05:00

‘Media treating OWS as a joke’

2011-11-08T11:50:00.003-05:00

Iran's Press TV, Tue Nov 8, 2011 4:7PM:

An exclusive interview with Linh Dinh, writer and author

Major media outlets are mocking the Occupy Wall Street movement, seeking to distract and confuse public opinion as the anti-capitalist pitch grows louder, an analyst says.

Press TV has interviewed with Linh Dinh, writer and author from Philadelphia, to further discuss the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of Don DeBar, an additional guest.

What follows is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: The majority of economic analysts and experts speaking about America agree that there was financial greed, there was a financial fraud involved that led to the financial crisis. Now these protesters are showing their anger, saying that the banks and corporations, the ones who created the crisis, are the ones getting funds and not them. Will this protest movement eventually force the government to admit that point, and to appoint a different economic policy? Or is that asking too much?

Dinh: So far there’s been a lack of clarity about what the protesters really want the government to do.

About two weeks ago, they did put out an announcement that they will have a national convention next year in which they would put out a list of demands, and then wait one year for the government to meet these demands. And if they don’t, if the government doesn’t respond, they would put out a party that would run for elections. They would put out candidates that would run for elections in 2014, and then presumably in 2016.

But this proposal has not been followed up, you know. It sounds like a much needed idea, that they would put out a third party to challenge the Republicans and the Democrats. But for some reason this declaration has not been followed up. So, I’m not sure whether they will follow through with this idea.

But anyway, the media has not been very helpful in educating the public about what these protesters are really after. And of course, the media are not here to educate, they are here to confuse and to distract. So there’s been too much emphasis on the protesters themselves, as far as the sanitation issues, the sexual assaults and etc. etc.

These problems with any kind of public outdoors encampment are to be expected. And so far, these incidents have been very few. The sanitation, the assaults, the violence, these incidents have been very few.

But these are the problems ordinary homeless people face anyway, you know. So the protesters are only symbolically homeless, but whereas regular homeless people are often assaulted.

And of course, if you are sleeping outside, you’re not going to be clean. Using the bathroom is going to be a big issue, etc. etc.

And so I think it’s profound that so many Americans all over the country are willing to live so poorly, so squalidly, to make a point. So, instead of applauding the sacrifice that they are doing every day, you know, the media are treating them as if this is some kind of a game, as if this is a joke. You know it is not fun to sleep outside in the cold, in the snow.

Anyway, they don’t have all the time in the world. So, at some point I think they would have to limit the main points and clarify exactly what they are after.

Press TV: Do you agree that nothing can change for the better until the entire economic system is completely dismantled?

Dinh: Well, I think there is no consensus among the protesters, and that’s what I am trying to get at. Some of them are against capitalism and some of them are not. We don’t know what percentage of them is against capitalism.

It is a structural problem. I definitely agree that it’s a structural problem. And some of them are talking about the Federal Reserve as this generator of money. That the power to generate money in the United States is in the hands of private banks, and that’s a main problem. I don’t think you can solve much until you address that.

But then again, not all of the protesters agree with that assessment either. We don’t know how radical these people are, eventually. I think some of them are fairly radical in that they want a complete overhaul of the system, and some of them are fairly conservative in that they just want some people to be prosecuted within the laws that already exist.

General Strike: November 28, 2011!

2011-11-06T19:08:00.001-05:00

http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011

The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

The debt “super committee” makes its budget recommendations on Wednesday, November 23^rd, the day before Thanksgiving.

We know that the recommendations will include deep cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

We know that the Republicans in the Senate and House will overwhelmingly approve of the austerity package that is sure to come from the super committee's recommendations.

We also know that the Democrats will by and large fold and accept the austerity package.

We know that Obama will approve of the budget recommendations. (Otherwise, he would have invoked the 14^th Amendment and lifted the debt ceiling.)

Likewise, we know that as of November 23^rd, ironically the day before Thanksgiving, the austerity package will be forthcoming and that the vast majority will now pay an additional price for the criminality of the corporate, military and financial oligarchy.

The vast majority will not have the corporate, military and financial oligarchy to thank on Thanksgiving.

Instead, the vast majority is being attacked by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy and its representatives in the White House and both houses of Congress. We are being forced to pay for the failures of the capitalist class and the precariousness of the profit system.

We are no longer represented by the U.S. government. Instead, the government is an instrument of the capitalist class and this class has nothing but its own interests at heart. This class will continue to force its will upon us. The two political parties are simply two levers by which this capitalist class controls the political processes in the U.S.

The only thing we have left is our consent to work. The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

Likewise, Citizens for Legitimate Government is calling for a General Strike to begin at 7 AM EST on Monday, November 28^th, 2011!*

Extend your Thanksgiving weekend by refusing the austerity measures to be imposed on the vast majority by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy!

General Strike, Monday, November 28, 2011!

URL for this page: http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011

Media inquiries: media@legitgov.org

General inquiries: contactus@legitgov.org

Contribute to this action by clicking here.

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*Note, the CLG encourages ALL workers in the U.S. (and abroad) to join the strike. This is a unified strike of the entire workforce.

New York Chic

2011-10-29T12:38:00.002-04:00

THOMAS H. NAYLOR in CounterPunch, 10/28/11:

Arrogant City

One of the things I remember most about becoming a student at Columbia University in 1957 was the arrogance of the Columbia College football fight song. “Oh, who owns New York? Why, we own New York. C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A.” A not so subtle reminder of the fact that Columbia once owned Rockefeller Center.

American exceptionalism pales in comparison to the hubris of New Yorkers. Most Americans believe that the United States is the greatest nation in the world. All New Yorkers know that New York City is the greatest city on the planet. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, “the nation’s mayor,” raised such pretentiousness to heretofore unseen levels. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is no exception.

New York City is the economic, financial, marketing, cultural, moral, and political epicenter of the world. Although Washington, D.C. is the nominal capital of the United States, New York City is the de facto capital, since the U.S. Government is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate America and Wall Street.

Brooklyn writer Christopher Ketcham recently published a scathing indictment of New York City in Orion Magazine based on a study by the New York think tank called the Fiscal Policy Institute. According to the study New York has the most inequitable distribution of income of any of the twenty-five largest cities in the United States. In 2007, those households in the top one percent income bracket received nearly forty-four percent of all of the income in New York City. These so-called “One Percenters” had an average annual income of $3.7 million. Ketcham notes that the One Percenters consist of only 34,000 households, about 90,000 people, out of a population of 9 million. And who are these One Percenters? They work for Wall Street based stock brokers, investment banks, hedge funds, credit card companies, and insurance companies. Their employers include the likes of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank.

Ketcham describes New York One Percenters as, “Sociopaths getting really rich while everyone else just sits on their asses and lets it happen.” Maybe the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators read his piece?

New York City is all about money, power, speed, greed, and looking out for number one. It is the global capital of technofascism – affluenza, technomania, cyber-mania, megalomania, robotism, globalization, and imperialism.

My favorite art exhibit in New York City is the large room in the Guggenheim Museum whose four walls are completely covered with 100,000 one-dollar bills.

Several years ago, when the New York Stock Exchange considered the possibility of leaving Wall Street, a prominent Yale economist seriously proposed that the Exchange convert its former headquarters into the Museum of Money.

New Yorkers are primarily into having – owning, possessing, manipulating, and controlling – money, power, people, things, wealth, culture, media, and ideas. In the words of theologian Paul Tillich, “they are separated from themselves, from others, and the ground of their being.”

Christopher Ketcham has few kind words for the city’s culture which he describes as “cultural nihilism” dominated by “neohipsters.” “The neohipster is a creature of advertisers: affluent and status-anxious, which means that he is consumerist and, in the manner of all conspicuous consumers, conforming to the demands of narcissistic chic.”

No one hypes New York chic more effectively than The New Yorker, the magazine for effete snobs. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are firmly committed to promoting Wall Street, globalization, American imperialism, and unconditional support for the terrorist state of Israel.

New York City is nothing less than the modern equivalent of the Tower of Babel. It is too big, too crowded, too undemocratic, too regimented, too intrusive, too polluted, too noisy, too commercial, too materialistic, and too dehumanized. It has too much traffic, too many policemen, too much crime, too much drug addiction, and too little sense of community.

The Columbia College football fight song gets right to the heart of what New York City is all about – ARROGANCE!!

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2010 Election Jive from Jean Quan:

2011-10-28T15:29:00.001-04:00

Common Dreaming

2011-10-26T14:13:00.009-04:00

As published at OpEd News, Dissident Voice, Intrepid Report and CounterPunch, 10/26/11:

A protest sign in NYC, “FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I FEEL AT HOME.” Home is Liberty Park, a 33,000-square-foot plot where hundreds have camped nightly for over a month. During the day, they march together, their bodies merged into a common thrust, while at night, they lie together. Some are barely covered, while others are entirely wrapped, like collateral damage of yet another stupid war. Be careful or you’ll step on an arm, leg or even head.

In a country of walls and locked doors, where even infants have private domains, there are no barriers here. With everyone exposed, and no TV to distract, conversation comes more readily. Here, no canned music slops over each dialogue or interior monologue. Here, all crazy, percussive rhythms and melodies must be generated by living muscles and breaths. Here, all faces are real all the time, with none beamed from uptown or across the land mass.

Though we’ve been together all these decades, I don’t think I ever saw you good before this goddamn protest. Beatific apes, winged baboons or renaissance orangutans, why are we so gorgeous? Sweetie, it’s been so long since I had a leisurely gaze at your magnificence, fixated as I was by the holograms.

Yes, there are laptops, cell phones and cameras here, but machines don’t dictate. Most folks here have no ready access to electricity. During 21st century America, and in Lower Manhattan no less, this qualifies as primitive, and it’s not just something to endure, a nuisance, but a primary if hidden aim of this pow-wow.

In a society where proximity is the biggest sin, where another skin is best avoided, where virtual coitus has become a national pastime, these weirdos, misfits and outcasts have converged into one writhing body, and I don’t list these categories derisively, as I am one also. I’m all of the above. In any sick culture, it should be a badge of honor to not fit in. In my teens, I was inspired by Franz Kline’s “A bohemian is one who can survive where an animal would die,” and by Alfred Jarry having to write on his belly because his one room apartment has been divided, vertically and horizontally, into four quarters by an enterprising slum lord. To supplement his piss poor diet, Jarry also fished from the Seine, but water was still water then.

As always, it’s OK to drop out, train hop, squat in a warehouse, dumpster dive or stand in a trash can to take a shower, but one does not do these out of masochism, but to survive or save oneself from the deformations imposed by a system that sanctions endless war, torture and the humiliation of countless victims. Just this week, America gloated over the capture, sodomizing then shooting of a trumped up enemy, then stood by as our disneyfied allies barbarically displayed his near-naked corpse in public.

Suffering is endurable if our integrity and essential values have not been compromised, and sacrifice is worth it if it may lead to a better order. In this rat race hot house of calculating schmoozers who cheerfully suck up to keep their health insurance, gain promotion, bonus or tenure, not to mention a chance to screw down, there are still many who will eschew comfort and moolah to serve the common good. An Occupy Wall Street snapshot from 10/14/11: A young woman cleaning an unknown stranger’s vomit because, well, someone had to, not that she liked it, “Ah, this is just perfect! Just what I want to do, to clean someone’s vomit in the middle of the night. It’s just like Christmas, I tell you.”

They come to the center from lesser boroughs, cities and towns. Exiled to post-industrial, post-First World waste lands or strip mall and chain-burger-shack developments, they invade this privileged polis, where they must deal with the crooked policy of the pole lease and dicks. Lying on the ground, they can finally dwell in a proper and propaganda America, since, normally, few can afford to rent or buy within five miles of this tourist magnet, post card-ready hunk of real estate. This occupation, then, has aspects of a refugee camp. Here gather victims of an economic war, the homeless, unemployed, underemployed and those who may be fired tomorrow, but it is also a rebel camp, where these previously faceless, dispersed and downtrodden lumpens discover common cause and recover their strength for a counterattack.

In any community, renewals are essential. For health to be regained, mistakes must be acknowledged, structural defects corrected and character flaws identified, shamed then purged, but, in this society, all normal channels for healing have been corrupted. Once again, we are presented with an animated election pageantry that promises much, but will solve nothing. The American patient will be kept prostrate and exposed, so that it can be picked over by the military/banking complex vultures. (Yes, it’s time to update that term, since we hardly have any industry left in America.) If we want renewal, then, we must do it ourselves, from outside in and from the ground up, but before we can achieve anything, we need to sharpen our vision of what victory may look like.

Besieged by heaven-puncturing towers of double speak and obscuranto, an all inclusive tribe has gathered. Lapped by an invisible ocean, we teem in this common embryo, but mother is exhausted and may not survive this. Will light come?

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Totally Corrupt America

2011-10-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS in CounterPunch, 10/24/11:

Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment.

Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong.

I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches. To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize.

The financial crisis, which is very much still with us, did not result from accident or miscalculation; neither did it result because of a flaw in Alan Greenspan’s theory, as he told Congress when a feeble effort was made to hold him accountable. It was the intentional result of people motivated by short-term profits who wanted to get theirs and get out.

As Reckless Endangerment shows, fraud characterized every stage of the process from the fraudulent borrower incomes and credit scores that mortgage issuers gave to unqualified buyers, through the securitization of the mortgages and their triple-A investment grade ratings by the rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s especially, but also Moody’s and Fitch) to the investment banks that sold what the banks knew was junk to investors around the world as investment grade securities. Indeed, Goldman Sachs was simultaneously betting against the mortgage derivatives that it was selling to clients.

Investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which once considered it a matter of honor to represent the interests of customers, took advantage of the trust that had been built up in the past to commit fraud against customers in order to advance the banks’ short-term profits and the out-sized multi-million dollar managerial bonuses that these fraudulent profits produced.

Morgenson and Rosner provide a number of unique accounts of how those benefitting from fraud were able to defeat laws that were passed that would have held them to account. For example, the state of Georgia passed perfect legislation that held predatory lending to account. William J. Brennan Jr. and Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes got the Georgia Fair Lending Act through the state legislature. It was a model for other states. As the federal regulators had thrown in the towel, the state laws would have prevent the worst part of the financial crisis, it not prevented the crisis altogether.

The Georgia law only lasted a few months, because the rating agencies saw that their enormous profits from issuing fraudulent investment grade ratings were threatened by the law. The corrupt rating agencies mischaracterized the consumer protection act as a jihad by regulators. Standard & Poor’s declared that it would no longer allow Georgia mortgages to be placed in mortgage securities that it rated.

In other words, Georgia mortgages could no longer be securitized. This announcement banned Georgia mortgage lenders from securitization. Thus, the law was overturned, and fraud ran wild.

These kind of mafia strong-armed tactics in order to protect at all costs the short-term mega-bonuses that drove the totally fraudulent system have never been held accountable or punished. Totally innocent people are held indefinitely and tortured by the US government for no other reason than to convince the gullible public that they are endangered by terrorists, but those who wiped out the home ownership and retirement pensions of millions of Americans now hold high and honorable positions on corporate boards and US regulatory agencies.

Federal regulatory agencies totally failed. Brooksley Born tried to use her statutory authority to regulate over-the-counter derivatives, but she was blocked by the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasure secretary, and the SEC chairman and forced to resign. As University of Chicago Nobel economist George Stigler predicted, regulatory agencies are captured by those who are intended to be regulated. This was the case.

Regulators turned a blind eye to obvious criminal fraud, and were rewarded with lucrative positions in the financial community. The same for the US senators and representatives who repealed Glass-Steagal and other financial regulations.

For example, former US senator Phil Gramm who spearheaded the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, the repeal of which set up the financial crisis, was rewarded by being made vice chairman of the mega-bank UBS, a Swiss global financial services company.

What Taibbi, Morgenson and Rosner make clear is that while monster criminals continue to collect their multi-million dollar annual incomes, depressed single mothers, deserted by the men who fathered their child, are sent to prison for having small quantities of illegal drugs to boost their depressed spirits, and their children are put out to adoption.

This is “justice” in America where there is “freedom and democracy.”

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Occupy Liberty Street (OLS)! (The Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

2011-10-23T19:17:00.001-04:00

Gary North at LewRockwell, 10/22/11:

The phrase "Wall Street" is a representative of the financial community. The only sensible reason for occupying Wall Street is for symbolic purposes. You want to call the public's attention to the problem.

What is the problem? I contend that the people occupying Wall Street do not understand the problem. If they did, they would be forming picket lines in front of the New York Federal Reserve bank at 33 Liberty Street. That is where the problem began in 1914. That is where the problem will be solved.

The less well informed will form picket lines in front of the representative agency of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, namely, the Federal Reserve Bank building in Washington, D.C.

The power has never resided there. That is a symbol to deceive the Congress of the United States, which operates under the illusion that it is in charge of the Federal Reserve System because it is nominally in charge of the Board of Governors of the FED, an agency with national sovereignty.

The symbol of this sovereignty is the suffix to its URL: www.FederalReserve.gov. The "gov" ID is the mark of sovereignty.

The New York FED is where the decisions are made. Its URL suffix is ".org." That is the mark of its legal incorporation as a private entity.

[...]

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"Real World" seeking Occupy Wall Street protestors

2011-10-20T21:14:00.001-04:00

(Reuters)--Occupy Wall Street protesters may get a new platform to voice their opinions after MTV's "The Real World" reality TV show posted a casting call reaching out to supporters of the movement.

The casting call, posted on Monday this week by "Real World" production company Bunim/Murray on website Craigslist, stated they were "seeking cast members to tell their unique stories" and specifically asks people if they are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement and in their 20s.

"The producers of Bunim/Murray productions are targeting young passionate people to be a part of the next cycle," of the TV show, an MTV spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday.

[...]

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Resurrection Cities

2011-10-19T16:22:00.012-04:00

As published in OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 10/20/11:

The 99% will convene a National Convention in Philadelphia, so that’s the good news. Where America was born, they will try to bring her back to life, save her from this deepening degradation. Their list of demands, to be released in October of 2012, will most likely be ignored by whoever are in charge by then. The new, reshuffled Washington gang will be made up of Wall Street and Federal Reserve puppets, as usual. These career flunkies entered national politics to suckle and suck from big business, so why would they bite their gold men’s sacks? With their grievances ignored, the 99% will field candidates for the 2014 mid-term election, then, presumably, the 2016 Presidential one, but will they get enough officials elected to make any difference at all, and what kind of shape will America be in by then?

Will unemployment be 40 or 50%? Will we be fighting a dozen wars, or, defeated everywhere, maybe even none? Will the occupy encampments become “enduring” tent cities? Will Chicago protesters plant vegetables and raise chickens in Grant Park? For a preview of what’s to come, look no further than Philadelphia itself.

Unlike elsewhere, Mayor Nutter has been sympathetic towards these protesters. He visited them on the very first night, showing up at 1:15AM to say, “The things you're talking about are the things I talk about every day.” He instructed his police chief to have the First Amendment, about freedom of assembly, to be read at roll call each morning, at each police district. Most importantly, he allowed protesters to pitch tents right next to City Hall.

Two weeks into Occupy Philly, there are about 350 tents right in the heart of Philadelphia, as well as makeshift dwellings of pallets, tarps, cardboard and plywood. One has a two-foot-high platform, so it can endure the cold and rain better than most. These people are planning to stay, in short. This plaza has long been a magnet for Philly’s homeless, with about 50 folks curled up on benches each night. Now they’re joined by hundreds who are only symbolically homeless.

Some of the long-time homeless have picked up donated tents, and three times a day, they also line up at the Occupy Philly chow tent. Though they tend to be more scruffy and older, it’s not always easy to distinguish between a regular homeless person and a protester, but, if you think about it, each homeless individual is already a protester.

All-too-visible and rapidly increasing in each city and town, the homeless are an accusation that our system is truly messed up. In the “greatest country on earth,” the top 10% own 71% of the wealth, while the bottom 40% must scrape by on less than 1% and, this year, at least 3.5 million Americans, or more than 1%, will experience homelessness at some point.

The brainwashed will sneer that the poor deserve to be broke because they’re so damn lazy and, well, not enterprising enough, but, in any society, no one works harder than those at the very bottom, where it takes a superhuman effort just to survive from day to day, and it wasn’t poor Americans who conned the entire world, then looted our treasury to reward themselves eight-figure bonuses. In this upside down nation, it’s the bottom 90% who must sacrifice everything to succor the top 10%. We must eat less and even sleep outside so they can indulge their vicious, insatiable greed and endless war. Our biggest companies rake in trillions from organized carnage and swindling, yet Citigroup, Bank of America, GE, Chevron, Boeing, Conoco, Exxon Mobil and other big boys pay no taxes. Instead, they get rebates from the IRS. Money buys influence, and all the rules are rigged against us, and unless we revolt, we must endure increasingly savage destitution. Not satisfied with our sweating and bleeding bodies, these ogres want to devour generations to come. No wonder the kids are rebelling.

Martin Luther King’s last project was to organize Resurrection City, where poor Americans could be made visible to the Washington elite, the rest of America and even foreign tourists. Living in makeshift dwellings, they were a protest against America’s misplaced priorities, but King was shot before Resurrection City was even erected, and Bobby Kennedy, its conceiver, was murdered just afterwards.

In Philadelphia, a new Resurrection City has arisen, however, and across the street from this rapidly expanding community, there’s Philly’s swankiest address, the 48-story Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, where a one-bedroom bachelor’s pad can be had for half a million bucks, and the penthouse, $12 million. Backlit by warm, yellow lights, Ritz-Carlton residents can be seen each night looking down at the mess of tents below. Some peer through binoculars, others snap photos, but they didn’t pay through their cosmetically enhanced noses to put up with this stinking Third-World vista. It is quaint and lively, yes, but also squalid and somewhat menacing. Tonguing a prosciutto roll, they frown and imagine the day, soon, too soon, when these tents will surround them completely.

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The Beginning Is Near

2011-10-17T10:13:00.005-04:00

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report, 10/17/11:

The anti-Wall Street protest has often resembled a street party. In occupied Liberty Park, people banged on drums, danced, performed mime, even dangled donuts to bait cops. Their mood has been merry, which is remarkable considering that they’ve been sleeping out in the open, on hard ground, in a compact park, without even tents over them. Food and money have been limited, and sanitation a logistical nuisance, yet even a cloudburst in the middle of the night, drenching everyone, was greeted with cheers. A sign, “THE REVOLUTION WILL BE PLAYFUL.”

Critics have slandered these protesters as idle and frivolous, as muddled crybabies who would flee from any job application, not that anyone’s hiring, by the way. This rally, then, is just a noisy blight on America’s crooked economic engine. With a first dusting of snow, these anarchists, hippies, art students, bums and trust fund kids would all go home to mommy. Third-term billionaire mayor Bloomberg—who says money can’t prolong life?—even moaned that this protest was targeting people just "struggling to make ends meet," and he was sorta right, of course, because there’s no way Wall Street’s end can meet any of our ends.

When noticed at all, the protesters’ frequent meetings have often been dismissed as pointless and confused. Surely nothing will come of their callow and cumbersome deliberations. Their decisions can’t and won’t matter. America’s life and death matters are decided by cynical, rich old guys in suits, not bongo stroking freaks, so debate all you want, but there’s no way your jejune ideas can inflect, however slightly, this monster bank-dominated, Federal Reserve-run, two war party system.

With the just released The99%Declaration, our ruling class has been issued an ultimatum, however. The anti-Wall Street protesters will convene a National General Assembly in Philadelphia from July 4th, 2012 until October of 2012, resulting in a “PETITION OF GRIEVANCES to be submitted to all members of Congress, The Supreme Court and President and each of the political candidates running in the nationwide Congressional and Presidential election in November 2012.” If these grievances are not redressed within one year, the 99% “will organize a third independent political party to run candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections.”

This is the best news I’ve heard in a while. Finally, some much needed oxygen in this suffocating political dungeon. These mostly young protesters have stayed clear of any current politician. Showing more maturity than many of their elders, they trust neither Democrats nor Republicans. They are not suckered by Obama nor distracted by Clinton’s Usher and Lady Gaga circus. It’s incredible, isn’t it, that the man who enacted NAFTA and repealed the Glass-Steagall act can now go on television to lament that “the American Dream has been under assault”?

With their rejection of this walled up and dead end system, the protesters can bring to mind Bartleby, with his “I’d prefer not to,” but this movement is not just a refusal to be co-opted into a murderous and life-sapping existence. Last week, America entered yet another war, but who’s keeping track any longer? A Yahoo! headline, “Mysteries of Clinton’s Big Concert Solved,” and the Cardinals are amazing, aren’t they?

A third, viable political party is long overdue. Though the moneyed interest will surely bare its fangs before it gives up even a sturgeon egg from its privileged table, it is high time we break apart this mad vehicle before it hurls us all into the abyss.

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Linh Dinh's state of the union

2011-10-13T10:19:00.010-04:00

Andrew Cox interviews me for Jacket2, 9/28/11:

New Orleans. Photograph by Linh Dinh.

Linh Dinh is a Philadelphia-based poet, author, and teacher. He currently runs State of the Union, a photo blog that documents the homeless in the United States and explores the relationship between the economy, advertising, society, and poverty. You can see a gallery of images selected for Jacket2 here.

Andrew Cox: Why did you start State of the Union?

Linh Dinh: In 2005, I taught a writing course called State of the Union at Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. I wanted the students to address the crises afflicting our nation. It’s certainly not easy to make sense out of what’s going, especially since there’s so much disinformation and propaganda out there. I’ve also taught this course at the University of Montana and University of Pennsylvania. State of the Union, then, is my attempt to track, through images and words, what’s happening to this country. The project has also forced me to spend much more time in the physical world, as oppose to sitting in front of the computer. Like most of us, I was living a mediated life, I was living mostly through the computer, but, with this project, I’ll walk for miles though the streets, looking and hearing, and sometimes asking questions. Before I started, I had become alienated from much of my home city. I had forgotten the names of the neighborhoods, places I had known as a housepainter.

I was also tired of being an inhabitant of the poetry ghetto. Poets are entirely invisible and irrelevant in this society. As America collapses, poets have nothing to contribute to the general conversation. Few have anything to say, and the ones who do are ignored in any case. I was tired of being published in books and literary journals that no one reads. My political essays, then, are my attempt at reaching a bigger audience, a more general audience. I want to use all of my skills as a writer to address people who would not likely read my poems. I’m particularly happy that my latest piece, “Mare Mere,” is being run by both CounterPunch and Dissident Voice, since it has elements of the prose poem. It is two-thirds political essay and one-third poetry. I’ll try to write more in this vein.

Cox: Why do you think poets are ignored? Is it worldwide or just an American phenomenon?

Dinh: Conditioned by the car and television, we value speed above all. We want everything to be fluid and accelerated. We don’t care about quality, just quantity. It doesn’t matter what we eat, we just want to stuff ourselves as fast as possible. Poetry is too slow for this culture. The poets themselves are also to be blamed, however. Dodging life instead of confronting it, most of them are ridiculously feeble. They think the ideal life is to be on campus forever, with a break once a year to go to their much-anticipated convention. There, they can suck up and screw down.

Da Vinci said, “A man who looks forward to spring is looking forward to his own death.” To always look forward, then, is to be forever dissatisfied with the present, but that’s the culture we have, we’re always looking forward to next year, next week, next hour, we can’t stand this present second. Our culture doesn’t just anticipate death, it’s living it!

In short, a people who will not reflect and who can’t stand silence will not read a poem. Though this has become a worldwide phenomenon, it’s much more advanced in certain places, like [the US], for example, where we’ve reached a psychotic state. We hate our own mind, frankly. We don’t want to hear it speak. Notice how people must turn on an electronic device soon as they enter a room, be it TV, stereo, or computer. Sometimes all three are turned on simultaneously. Without these surrogate voices, we’re lost. What I’m talking about goes way beyond poetry, obviously. What I’m trying to get at is the reverence and courage that allow you to hear yourself and other people not just more clearly, but at all.

A quick observation about Vietnam. I went back in 1995, 1998, then stayed for two and a half years starting in 1999. While there, I could observe it shift towards the American model, which is all distraction all the time, where serious thinking is drowned out by nonsense, titillation, and trivia. Wearing T-shirts with weird or actual English, many people started to listen to loud, recorded music, watch mindless TV and lusting after brand names, though few could afford them. None of this is necessarily bad in itself. I mean, a stupid T-shirt is just a piece of underwear with some moronic writing on it, and I enjoy a good soccer match as much as the next guy, but this rising pop culture was helping to mask many, many serious problems. There was prostitution on practically every street. In factories, workers were being abused. Likewise for the servants in middle class households. I’m not even against prostitution in itself, only the poverty that forced many young women to become whores. Top Communist officials became obscenely rich, bought many properties and sent their kids to Western universities, while the poorest sold their bodies and begged. However, with this loud music, exciting soccer matches, constantly flickering TV and many sexy photos, intimate or blown up, it was no longer necessary to arrest serious writers and thinkers. As in America, the Vietnamese intellectual has become irrelevant.

Cox: When you first left the office and computer how did you feel getting out into the physical world?

Dinh: The office sounds so grand! Well, I have a little room with a desk and a tiny bed. I didn’t snore ten years ago, but now I do, so my wife and I sleep in different beds, in different rooms. In my so-called office, there’s some food stored in the corner: a case of tuna, one of instant noodles and several bags of rice. We don’t have much room, so every square foot must be stacked with something. Where I work, then, where I’m typing this, is more survival bunker than regular office. If there’s a nuclear explosion or meltdown, my wife and I could lock ourselves in this rat hole of a room and survive until Jesus, Allah, or Buddha, whoever’s truly biggest, meanest or asskickingest, knocks on the door to say, Hey, everything’s OK, you can come out now!

By definition, a writer or artist must work in isolation. He must be removed from the world as he writes, paints or whatever, but a writer must also be among other people so he can have something to write about. My first book, Fake House, was populated mostly by losers, the types I was surrounded with, and with whom I worked and drank. Of course, some of the characters were more or less me. I was a total loser, financially, socially, and erotically. I was an embarrassment. Still am. I couldn’t get any of anything. You asked about the media. Well, the media is all about getting stuff. It’s about having all of your natural and unnatural appetites fulfilled. It’s about whooping it up, partying, fucking, and spending, but real life is not anything like that. Well, you might have a few highlights here and there, fondly remembered, but most of the time, it’s incredibly hard just to get by. Just to maintain your basic dignity, you have to exert yourself like crazy; you have to be a physical and mental athlete just to get by.

My first book, Fake House, was dedicated to “The Unchosen.” I’ve always been interested in so-called losers, because that’s the general human condition, if not now, then soon enough. We will all lose, but there’s also dignity and strength in losing. I came from a losing society, South Vietnam, and I’m experiencing a collapsing culture right now.

Anyway, I’ve always been a wanderer, a walker. As a kid in Saigon, I walked all over. When I lived in Italy and England, I’d go to many strange cities, towns, and villages and just walk. This project, then, is an intensification of an impulse I’ve always had. The only time in my life when I didn’t walk was in high school. I lived in San Jose and Northern Virginia then. These two places are heavily car-dependent. I hate them, frankly.

The computer is very addictive. I have never been addicted to the TV, for many years I didn’t even have a TV, but with the computer, I became sort of a screen addict for the first time. My site, State of the Union gives me a clear reason to leave the house, so that’s a good thing. I can walk out without going to the bar. I don’t drink a fraction of what I used to.

When you’re among people, you’re always surprised. You think you already know how they look and talk, but you’d often be wrong. People are always inventive because they’re restless, bored, and exhibitionistic. They also like to have fun. Packaging themselves, they’re always refining their acts. They’ll come up with the weirdest way of putting on a hat, for example, or of conveying the simplest message.

New York. Photograph by Linh Dinh.

Cox: What surprised you the most when you first started documenting the homeless? What surprises you now?

Dinh: I’ve lived in cities most of my life, so the homeless is nothing new. There is a lot destitution and squalor in Saigon, where I was born and spent my early childhood, and where I returned to live for two and a half years as an adult. When I moved to Philly in 1982, I saw many homeless living in the subway concourse, and I remember seeing hundreds of homeless in Tompkins Square in New York in the mid 1980s. Before I started my State of the Union project, I never talked to the homeless, however. It is enlightening to hear people’s stories. I don’t want to generalize too much about the homeless, but it is amazing to observe how tough and resilient these people are. On their faces and bodies are evidences of the very difficult lives they’ve endured, even before they became homeless. Many of these people look beaten up, because they have been. In Vietnam, too, you see these types of faces and bodies.

“Home” is such a physical and emotional necessity. While most of us still have roofs over our heads, I’d say that many of us are emotionally homeless. At best, we are dwelling in emotional halfway houses, or emotional bunkers, with many cans of expired tuna in a corner.

Now, I’d like to shoehorn an umbilical cord mooning monologue about home: I was born in Saigon and have lived there as an adult, but to call that home would be a stretch. I’m most familiar with Philadelphia and do identify with it, but I can’t deny feeling elated whenever I could leave it, if only temporarily. I was calmest and happiest when I lived in Certaldo, Italy, population 16,000, but I could barely speak the language and didn’t have to make a living there. With the exception of San Jose and Northern Virginia, I’m fond of all the places I’ve lived in, including Norwich, England, and Missoula, Montana, but, as Camus said, and I’m quoting from memory and probably butchering it, “He loves all women, which means he loves none of them.” My mother is from Hanoi, so I can still fake a fairly convincing Hanoi accent, and several times I’ve caught myself thinking, while in Hanoi, “It’d be beautiful to die here,” but of course I’m not dying to live there, so that’s not really home either. I’m OK with being home/less. I’m happiest when I’m on a train, though of course, I’m also anxious to get off.

Philadelphia. Photograph by Linh Dinh.

Cox: You said many homeless people have been beat up. Who is attacking these people?

Dinh: Tyrone, a forty-five-ish black man who was on the streets for nearly a year, told me he was beaten up by three teens. He showed me stitches on his forehead. A thirty-ish white guy was almost stabbed with a box-cutter by a white, drunken girl, walking with a group of friends. She slashed his bag. The story sounded a bit outlandish, but everything else he said was plausible. He said black women treated him the best, and, sure enough, a young black woman gave him a bag of McDonald’s food while we were talking. In Richmond, a white former nurse, Tony, also said that black women were the kindest to him. As if on cue, again, a black woman gave him an apple not even a minute later. Tony related how a Mexican homeless man was hit with a stick as he washed his clothes in the river. His attacker was some black guy, maybe another homeless dude. This Mexican guy had a big gash on his head but didn’t dare go to the emergency room because he was illegal. Knowing Tony had been a nurse, he asked Tony for help. Tony looked at it and said it would heal eventually, so that was that.

If you’re lying on the sidewalk, you’re going to be vulnerable, obviously. That’s why so many of them sleep during the daytime, because it’s safer that way, with many people walking around. Even when you’re not attacked, it’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep, obviously, because of the weather, the noise and because you’re lying on cardboard.

Cox: Some of your pictures feature images of advertising. What do you think about the relationship between marketing and the homeless?

Dinh: Much of photography is used to seduce. It sells you on a fantasy so you will buy the product. The glamorous advertising images and catchy slogans serve as an obscene contrast to what’s actually on the streets. The last time I was Vietnam, in 2001, I often saw the slogan, RICH PEOPLE, STRONG COUNTRY, on government billboards, but this was still old style Communist propaganda. With their heroic, broad shoulders and determined figures, always depicted from below, the Communists sought to inspire, but Capitalism is all about seduction. On American TV, there’s an ad that shows a famous football player, first in uniform, then stripped down to near total nudity. These female hands then dressed him in slacks, shirt and tie. Only at the end would you discover that this is actually a car commercial!

In any case, photography plays a central role in this come-on economy. There’s photographic seduction everywhere you turn. The system will strip you and leave you with a very cool photo, and it won’t even be yours to own, son, you can only look at it! I’m trying to capture this swindle in my photos.

Cox: In your writing you are critical of the spread of casinos. Why?

Dinh: Casinos are perfect emblems of our nonproductive economy. A lot of money changes hand in a casino, but it produces absolutely nothing. Factories are being abandoned in cities and towns across America, but casinos are spreading all over. Fools and crooks who support casinos say they bring jobs, but casinos are net losses in every community.

Camden. Photograph by Linh Dinh.

Cox: Do you ask for permission before you photograph anyone? Do you explain what you are using the images for and if so, what is a typical reaction?

Dinh: If I can get away with sneaking a photo, I’ll do that. Generally speaking, I don’t want my subjects to pose or even be aware of my presence, but since I carry a large camera, this is not always possible. From each photo, you can generally tell whether I’ve engaged my subject. Sometimes I offer people a bit of money, usually just a buck or two, to take their photos. I gave ten dollars to a Camden woman, however, so she could buy cans of Sterno for her tent. In Detroit, I also gave an old man ten bucks because he was in such bad shape. He said he needed this money for a prescription. Whenever I visited the tent city in Camden, New Jersey, I’d bring twenty-four large cans of beer, though I’d end up drinking three or four myself. I’ve also bought food for the homeless.

When I talk to people on the streets, I do tell them I’m writing about the economy. Most know full well the economy is in horrible shape and will get even worse, and most of them don’t mind talking to me about their dire situations.

Once, I saw a young woman who was raving and extremely dirty, she even smelled of urine, but as soon as I talked to her, she became sane and radiant. Not to exaggerate but she became shockingly beautiful. I bought her something to drink and lent her my cellphone so she could call a friend in Baltimore to pick her up in Philadelphia.

As an artist, you’re always a kind of vulture when you’re around people, you’re always trying to make use of what they say, how they look or who they are, and since art is always subjective, a kind of distortion, you’re always deforming people to suit your purposes. Although art is always, in this sense, an exploitation, it is also a kind of tribute, and hence, of love. Sometimes I can barely stand how magnificent and beautiful people are.

Cox: You mentioned bringing beer or food with you sometimes. A common stereotype is the homeless asking for money or holding a sign by the freeway just want it to buy drugs and alcohol. How accurate is this stereotype?

Dinh: Well, there are soup kitchens. In Camden, I went with a group of homeless to a very clean and dignified soup kitchen. People sat down at these long tables and were served by volunteers. When this homeless couple left a bit early, I asked them, “What happened? Didn’t you like the food?” The woman was a deaf mute, so only the man answered. He said, “Yeah, we liked it fine, but now we’re going to a second soup kitchen!” Another guy told me, “You have to be a moron to starve in Camden.” The problem is, many of the homeless are at least slightly crazy. Though some started out mentally ill or deficient, I’m sure many more became that way from having to live on the streets.

There’s a guy who wandered around the shopping mall in downtown Philadelphia. His pants were falling apart and sagging. You could literally see his crotch. My wife actually tried to give him a belt, but he wouldn’t take it. He wouldn’t even take cash. He never said a word, not one word, so maybe he couldn’t talk at all. Every now and then, you’ll run into a homeless person who won’t even take money.

In any case, I bring beer to the tent city in Camden because I figure, why shouldn’t these people have a beer? Also, I’d not be so welcome if I didn’t bring beer!

Cox: The tent city in Camden, New Jersey has made headlines in the past but I think many people would be shocked to hear tent cities exist in America. Some news reports said the type of people there would surprise you. What was it like when you went there?

Dinh: It was orderly and safe. In the summer, you could smell the shit in the honey bucket, but it wasn’t terribly dismal. Sure it was bad, but people were making the best of it. They’d hang out in the center, talk and laugh. Sometimes people would fight, they’d scream at each other, but I was there maybe ten times and never saw any violence. I’d hear about violent episodes, however, but these were very rare. In any case, the rest of Camden was much more dangerous. Jamaica, the head guy of the tent city, kept everything under control. Later, I’d hear from someone, living in another Camden tent city, that Jamaica would charge people a nominal fee to live in “his” tent city. I don’t know if this was true, but I did notice that Jamaica sometimes hoarded some of the beer I brought. Whatever. He was the “mayor” of that place, and a lot of the people I talked to seemed genuinely grateful to him. Rex, seventy-six years old, told me Jamaica carried him on his back to the hospital. Hardly anyone had a cell phone there, so it wasn’t like you could easily call 911 if there was an emergency. One time I went there and it was, like, five degrees out, and there was a huge snowstorm, and this kid, maybe twenty-two years old, was freaking out. We were standing around the fire, trying to warm ourselves, and this kid was raving because he couldn’t take it anymore. I lent him my cell phone so he could call his mom. He started to beg her to let him come home. “I’ll do anything you want me to do, Mom! I can’t take this anymore.” Jamaica said he’d put the kid on the Greyhound, and he apparently did, because I never saw that kid again.

That tent city got too much publicity, so the city government finally shut it down. It didn’t do anything but chase the people out and put a chain link fence around that plot. As for all the newly displaced, a private organization did take them to a motel, where they could be cleaned up, groomed then assisted in finding a job or housing. The official unemployment rate of Camden is twenty-five percent, however, so I’m sure many of these folks have ended up on the streets again. As for other tent cities, I’ve seen people living in tents or makeshift dwellings in a few other places besides Camden. There must be dozens across the country.

American cities are outlawing sleeping or camping in public. In many places, dumpster diving is also illegal. One should remember that during the 1929 Depression, much food was destroyed even as the nation starved! In Hawaii, Santa Cruz, and elsewhere, you can’t sleep in your own car, and in San Francisco, you can’t even sit on the sidewalk. These cosmetic measures are designed to mask our accelerating economic collapse. And yet, despite all the evidence, the mainstream media trumpet daily that the recovery is here.

To close, I want to quote Texas Congressman C. Wright Patman, as recorded by the great Studs Terkel in his 1970 oral history of the Great Depression, Hard Times, “A dictatorship could spring up here over night, if this country got so bad. If another Depression came, we’d have a revolution. People wouldn’t take it any more. They have more knowledge. The big ones, they’d be looking for somebody that’d have the power to just kill people, if they didn’t agree. When John Doe begins to get up, they’d just go down and shoot him.”

Well, that depression is here!

Dear Poets (a circular letter):

2011-10-09T12:46:00.000-04:00

.

A couple days ago, at the arraignment hearing in Chicago for Stephanie Dunn, the poet and artist arrested at behest of Poetry Foundation a few weeks back for a performance-based protest at the PF Wine and Cheese Gala, an official representative of the Poetry Foundation called on the judge to send Dunn to jail until her trial nine days from now. The judge was about to do this (he said as much to the defendant), but a public defender who is otherwise unrelated to the case intervened and convinced the judge to let Dunn go until her trial date-- on condition that a guilty plea be entered. The terrified Stephanie agreed.

Three days after Raul Zurita's reading at the Poetry Foundation, where six or seven activists of the Croatoan Poetic Cell peacefully hung banners (one of them praising Zurita and his old activist group CADA) and passed out leaflets calling for the charges against Dunn to be dropped (the cops were also called by the PF on these poets--they scampered away), the Chicago Police Department carried out a raid during a musical event on the warehouse where most of the members of the Croatoan Poetic Cell live. Property was confiscated and three people detained. Minutes after the police left, a car parked outside, belonging to a friend of those involved, burst into flames. I state the bizarre sequence of these events without making any claim of connections between them, for I have no solid proof. But that is the anecdotal record.

A statement by members of the Croatoan Poetic Cell will be released in the next days, I understand. It is time for poets to stand publicly against this outrageous overreaction by the Poetry Foundation against young writers and artists guilty of nothing except peaceful, conceptual acts of poetic insurgency-- of which there is, to be sure, a long and venerable tradition in our field.

Kent Johnson

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Surrounding the Bull

2011-10-07T03:53:00.009-04:00

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report, 10/7/11:

Hundreds of cops, some on horsebacks, are now protecting Wall Street 24 hours a day. At Bowling Green Park, they have also blocked access to the Merryll Lynch bull. To be warmed by the methane gas of a healthy market, no doubt, a group of New York’s Finest gathered near their sacred bovine’s digestive exit, just below its up-lashing tail.

“They’re all guarding the bull’s asshole,” I said to this middle aged black woman standing across the street.

“Yeah, they’re all guarding the bullshit!” She laughed.

It was nearly 10PM. At Wall Street and Broadway, I met a young protester from Austin. Twenty five years old, he’d been sleeping at Liberty Park since September 24th.

“What do you guys do when it rains?”

“We just have to deal with it. We sleep under tarps.”

“Man, that must really suck. You probably can’t sleep too well.”

“Yeah, sometimes I get up and my body aches all over, but we just have to deal with it. We’re not leaving.”

“And it’s fucked up they won’t let you guys use tents.”

“Yeah, it’s fucked up, so we’ll have to set up tents at some point. It’s getting colder, and we can’t just sleep like that if it snows.”

“You think the cops will come in and get rid of the tents?”

“I don’t know. Who knows.”

“You know in California and other places, cops have slashed tents of the homeless.”

“Yeah, I know, but the whole world is watching us now, so if they do that, the whole world will see it.”

I asked him about demands, about how everyone is demanding that these protesters make demands, but so far, nothing.

“We did put out a Declaration.”

“Yeah, but that’s a long list of grievances, without concrete demands.”

“Well, we don’t want to narrow it down to a few demands, because each community has issues that it wants to address. This protest is spreading, and a list of demands from here can’t address all the problems.”

“But what about educating the public? If you can highlight a few key issues, then the public will have a clearer idea of what is wrong?”

“I hear you, but there are already people doing that. Writers. They may not be in our group but they are sympathetic to us. The explanations are out there. There are already people explaining what is wrong.”

Naomi Klein was scheduled to speak at Liberty Park the next day, as a matter of fact, so he was right. All the explanations are out there, if only people would pay attention. I then asked about them having no leaders or spokesmen.

“We don’t want to designate a spokesman or a leader, because we don’t want all the pressure to be on him. We don’t want him to be harassed by the FBI, for the FBI to tap his phone. Look at all the protest leaders from the past. Look at how they killed Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. If they want to tap the phone, they’ll have to tap all of our phones.”

“Yeah, but some people are better at speaking than others, so these will emerge naturally, right?”

“You’re right, and they already have, but we can all talk. We all know what to say. We’ve taught each other what to say.”

He believed the country was solidly behind this protest, and support will only grow, “People love us, man. They send us all kinds of stuff. They send us money. People love us.”

Speaking of solidarity, I wouldn’t have been able to observe the protest if a dozen readers of my photo blog hadn’t sent me hundreds of dollars this past month alone. Part of this cash was used to fix my broken camera. With a poisoned media, untrained citizens must anoint themselves journalists.

Though protesters have released no official demands, many of the signs at Liberty Park are clear enough, “END THE WARS,” “END THE FED” and “TAX THE RICH.” These demands are also shouted out by protesters on their marches.

And the marches are getting larger and more representative. Everyone is here, basically, from tiny children to senior citizens, egg heads to hard hats, pacifists to war veterans. Black, white, yellow or brown, they are all here shouting in unison, “Wall street got bailed out. We got sold out,” “Tax the rich! End the wars!” and, “This is what real democracy looks like!”

About the only types who aren’t marching are Wall Street suits and, well, cops. It is sad to see so many policemen protecting the very people who have also ripped them off. At a Starbucks near the New York Stock Exchange, some cops have even become bouncers.

Running around trying to find a place to charge my camera batteries, I saw a Starbucks, but its entrance was blocked by a police-manned barricade spanning the street. I approached, “Can I go in?”

“I need to see an ID,” a cop said.

In the new America, one needs to show an ID just to enter a Starbucks? I pulled out my long expired Virginia driver’s license.

“So you’re not from New York?” The cop interrogated.

“No, I live in Philadelphia.”

“What are you doing in New York?”

“Just visiting.”

“Why did you come up?”

“Just to hang out in the city. No reason.”

This cop gave me a long hard look. I had neither tattoos nor piercings, and my hair and clothes were more or less neutral. I mean, I don’t dress to make a statement, and I don’t like to wear slogans on my person. He gave me a long, hard look, and I could tell that he didn’t quite believe I wasn’t a trouble maker of some kind, or maybe even a terrorist ready to plant a robust pipe bomb inside Ben Bernanke’s lying quiche hole, but goddamn it, this was only a stupid Starbucks, though it happened to be within sight of the New York Stock Exchange.

Had the cops moved their barrier five feet back, the public could enter this business unmolested, but they couldn’t do that, you see, because that would inconvenience the Wall Street denizens arriving from the other direction.

So there you have it. While 99% of us are losing our present and future, as we’re harassed and groped and sleep in the rain, in protest or for good, as some of us are sent overseas to get our nuts blown off, a banker must never be made uncomfortable, even when his errand, or, rather, even when his secretary’s errand is nothing more than to grab her (and the cops’) boss a frappucino.

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Marines Heading to Wall Street to Protect Protesters

2011-10-04T16:24:00.001-04:00

Tim King at Veterans Today, 10/4/11:

This is a war against people who are utilizing their constitutional rights.

(SALEM, Ore.) – The protesters on Wall Street will soon have the protection of United States Marines who will form a human wall between the crowds of tireless protesters and the increasingly unpopular New York cops who continue to appear on YouTube in scenes that twist the insides of patriotic Americans.

Michael Hayne, a Comedian and Columnist who has contributed to NY Times Laugh Lines, guest-blogged for Joe Biden, and writes a column for MSNBC.com affiliated Cagle, wasn’t joking when he related the information this weekend on the Website Addicting Info.

[Editor's Note: If ever the Veterans Orgs were going to stand with the American people and demonstrate that they are a contemporary force to be dealt with, it is now. Why? Because they take an oath 'to defend the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic'. They have failed miserably on the domestic end because they have not had the stomach to stand up to the politicians, usually due to the threat of having their current VA benefits legislation put in jeopardy if they don't stay in their assigned lane. Vets can be for their country, but only up to a point.

So all of you Vets in the New York Metropolitan area, you need to jump in here with your orgs. To sustain this protest, the key to winning, Vet groups will need to be 'rotated' where they can take turns. And the Vets don't have to buy onto all the demands of the current protestors, like free college for everyone and their other Santa Claus wish list. The Vets can put up their own demands. ...Jim W. Dean]

The news is welcome, particularly as people continue to learn more about Wall Street and New York City and the nature of the people in the upper echelons. Not only have Americans watched the players on Wall Street shove the nation’s future into their wallets, but there are more specific reasons that the police are behaving in a corrupt manner, they’re being paid off by groups like JP Morgan Chase, which recently donated:

“… an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple.” -JPMorgan Chase

Strengthen security? This is a war against people who are utilizing their constitutional rights.

There are many sayings associated with the United States Marine Corps, and most have something to do with honor and decency and respect for the right things. Sure, many people disapprove of this band of warriors due to the nature of their business, but I personally see it differently, and it would be impossible to do otherwise, as I was once a member of this military group.

At any rate, I like the way Haynes looks at it:

“That’s the type of support that may make an NYPD cop think twice before he decides to go all Tiananmen Square on a group of teenage girls, armed with chalk and cardboard signs (maybe it’s because they are spelled properly?).

“The Occupy Wall Street movement may have thought it broke new ground when the NYC Transit Union joined their movement, but that ground just tipped the Richter Scale with news that United States Army and Marine troops are reportedly on their way to various protest locations to support the movement and to protect the protesters.”

Here’s the message Ward Reilly relayed from another Marine, on his facebook page:

“I’m heading up there tonight in my dress blues. So far, 15 of my fellow marine buddies are meeting me there, also in Uniform. I want to send the following message to Wall St and Congress:

I didn’t fight for Wall St. I fought for America. Now it’s Congress’ turn.

My true hope, though, is that we Veterans can act as first line of defense between the police and the protester. If they want to get to some protesters so they can mace them, they will have to get through the Fucking Marine Corps first. Let’s see a cop mace a bunch of decorated war vets. I apologize now for typos and errors.

Typing this on iPhone whilst heading to NYC. We can organize once we’re there. That’s what we do best.If you see someone in uniform, gather together.

A formation will be held tonight at 10PM.

We all took an oath to uphold, protect and defend the constitution of this country. That’s what we will be doing.

Hope to see you there!!”

Remember, the Occupy Wall Street protests in other cities are getting underway, Seattle is already active and the Portland, Oregon event starts later this week.

[...]

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Letter from a Banker

2011-10-04T13:23:00.005-04:00

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report, 10/4/11:

Bankers are misunderstood and often slandered. Yes, we are greedy, but so are you. Cupidity is a natural urge, wouldn’t you say? It’s a kind of (con) genital juice that courses through everyone’s lower and higher plumbing. Whether it’s money, fame or nookies, most of us don’t just want our share, but always a bit more, often a lot more, than the next guy. Not to oversimplify, but here’s a bumper sticker for you, GREED IS LUST, but before you slap that onto your car, PayPal me five bucks, OK? It’s copyrighted. I just copyrighted it. Use it without my permission and I’ll sue your motherfucking ass.

So that’s established. So there’s nothing wrong with the fact that greed hardens me, but what makes me different from you is my method. I’m more clever than you, a whole lot more clever. (I didn’t want to say “smart” outright, since that would offend your sissy sensibility.) Part of it is education, yes. I did learn a few tricks in college, but it has to be the right one. While you sculpted sandwiches for Subway and/or went into suicidal debt, thanks to me, to attend Butt Fuck U, I chain smoked Havanas at the Skull & Bones before segueing into Haaaaaavard. Bet you don’t even know where that is, you dumbfuck. In any case, you went to school to get indoctrinated. I went to network.

At Harvard I joined a gang, so to speak, an Anglo-American gang, and our method is so clever yet so simple, and since you’re so stupid, I’ll only use the teeny tiniest words and speak as slowly as possible. If I had a set of crayons handy, I’d draw stick figures to help you to understand this. OK, so our entire method, trumpet blast then drum roll please, comes down to this: We make money out of nothing, then we lend it to you, you and you, for profit.

Is that it, you ask, and I’m sorry to be so anticlimactic, but if it works, why complicate it? This laughably simple method has enriched us and impoverished you, you and you for nearly a century, since 1913, to be exact.

I can see that you’re not quite satisfied. You want more. OK, OK, I’ll give you a cartoon slide show: Let’s say you are a developer, and you want to build a bunch of houses. Since you can’t just pull cash out of your ass, like me, you must come to my business for financing. The customers, likewise, can’t just fart Federal Reserve notes either, so they too must trudge to mi casa to secure loans. Thanks to the wizardry of fractional reserve banking and other neat tricks, I’m lending to y'all money I don’t even have, but though these interests are making me so damn fat—figuratively speaking, of course, not like you—I will go a step further. I will bundle a gazillion of these crappy mortgages together, chop them up real fine, then sell stinking shares to investors all over the world. Like Taco Bell, I’ll stuff my products with all sorts of impurities, but unlike them, I won’t even list the disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate or potassium chloride, etc., in my investment scrapple. Selling dog shit, I’ll even charge a commission.

But how can I get away with this? Where are the regulators? What are you, a Huffington Post intern? A college professor with an Obama button surgically attached to your forehead? Here, look into my laundry basket. The regulators are dozing among the lint and skid marks. Don’t disturb them.

So everything is going great, with houses being sold left and right, on mountain tops and in the middle of the desert even, until it seems that every Wal-Mart greeter and busboy is a proud owner of a McMansion, but of course they won’t be able to keep up payments, especially when interest rates jack up.

Though their mortgages have been turned into confetti and scattered all over the universe, I’ll still repossess their houses. Some I’ll sell, but since there are so few buyers these days, especially as I’ve tightened lending standards—who say I’m not upright?—many of these homes are left to rot. Some I’ll even tear down.

Looking out the window, I now see a mob down below. Night after night they sleep in the cold or rain without even a tent over them. They have a long list of grievances but no demands, not that they’ll get any concessions anyway. Though they’ve pointed accusatory fingers in my direction, I have nothing to worry about since they’ve refused to call me by name. Perhaps they don’t even know. Do you?

Should this carnival get rowdy, these hippies, punks, eco loonies, union goons and other assorted misfits will only get themselves hurt and, at most, a few of my foot soldiers annoyed. I’ve been talking to you real friendly, fuckheads, but in spite of my bonhomie and $10,000 Fioravanti suit, I can be nastier than Quentin Tarrantino’s worst nightmare. I’ve brought entire countries to their knees, so I won’t hesitate to squash a few more tattooed and nose ringed cockroaches. Cornell West or Michael Moore groupies ain’t ish. (I picked up that lingo from my “rebellious” son.) Now, would you like a drink? I’ll buy the first round.

[Occupy Philadelphia will not start tonight, so I will head to NYC in a few hours. For those in Philly, there's an Occupy Philadelphia planning meeting at Arch Street United Methodist Church, 55 N. Broad Street, just North of City Hall, from 6:30 to 9:30 PM tonight.]

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2011-10-04T07:49:00.001-04:00

Radix Malorum Est The Man

2011-10-02T19:56:00.010-04:00

10/3/11 Update: I've just asked Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report to not publish the piece below, since I wrote it before seeing the "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City." Following the Wall Street Protest through OccupyWallStreet, I didn't catch the Declaration when it was posted at NYC General Assembly on 9/30/11. Though the article below no longer reflects the current, very in flux situation, I still stand by my emphasis on clarifying one's demands in a protest.

The aims of any protest are to air grievances and, if everything goes right, to gain redress for the wrongs done. With language or action, the protester seeks to broadcast to an indifferent or even hostile public that he has been wronged by a specific agent, be it person or institution, and that this agent must be held accountable. The message, then, is crucial to any protest. One can even say that without a clear message, there is no protest.

Going into its third week, the anti-Wall Street protest has often been accused of being vague with its demands, and this obvious weakness has been exploited and ridiculed by the mainstream media. This is ironic since Anonymous A99, an original organizer if not brainchild of this protest, is perfectly clear about what it wants. From a YouTube video of March 12, 2011:

We seek an end to the corrupted two-party system by ending the campaign finance and lobbying racket.

Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.

We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.

As a first sign of good faith, we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.

It’s baffling that these succinct demands, exactly what this protest needs, are not being shouted out now, but with a much larger cast of protesters, a consensus is no longer possible. With their strong egalitarian or anarchic instincts, the protesters eschew not just leaders, but even majority decisions. Some even believe that demands are not necessary, but if that’s true, why subject yourselves to the ordeals of a sustained protest? If you don’t know what you want, how do you know when to pack up and go home? In any case, our criminal overlords would like nothing more than a thousand protests without demands. Yes, work off all of your anger but don’t demand anything from us!

Though most protests will fail in their primary objective of gaining redress, they can at least claim to have delivered a message, with many protesters choosing even death to make sure that their narrative is as stark as possible. Consider the hunger striker in prison. Voiceless and impotent, he has no other means to indict his oppressors, so his slow suicide is an allegory of his suffering and their crime. Look at what they are doing to me. They are killing me everyday! In turn, his jailors will try to disrupt this morality play by force-feeding him. Though torturers, they will pose as rescuing angels, and though they may kill him on another occasion, perhaps right after this failed hunger strike, they cannot allow this man to terminate his life now, on his own terms. Such is the importance of the message that they must hijack his story.

By sleeping in Liberty Park, even in rain and cold, the anti-Wall Street protesters are vividly illustrating to the world the dispossession afflicting nearly all Americans. We have lost jobs, homes, savings, Constitutional rights and, yes, even our country as a representative Democracy, but this powerful indictment would be wasted if it’s not clear who are being charged or what should be done about them.

It is pointless to rail against “greedy bankers,” for example, for greed is a sentiment that can flare up in anyone, even bums and hippies, and banker is just someone in the money lending business. You can’t prosecute greed any more than you can punish lust, but one should certainly demand that criminals at Goldman Sachs, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase, among others, be held accountable for rigging markets and stealing money from American tax payers. The nexus of these criminal activities is the Federal Reserve itself, a private banking cartel with a monopoly, incredibly and outrageously enough, on the issuance of our money.

What you have, then, is an entrenched and well defended group of criminals who know exactly what they want, while their vulnerable and transient victims are still undecided about what they’re demanding, if anything, or even who they’re fighting. If these protesters are not willing to define themselves any better, others will continue to distort and caricature them. Many will show up to further dilute or pervert their cause with alien agendas. Watch for Obamabots and Democratic Party operatives to slither in, not to mention undercover pigs.

Despite your momentum, protesters, you don’t have all the time in the world to help the public to understand what’s what, and what needs to be done. Of course that’s a heavy responsibility, but you have the stage now. I know the brilliant David DeGraw is among you, so why haven’t we heard more from him so far? Since you have no spokesman, the topless Zuni Tikka has become your mascot, and though I have nothing against eye candies, it’s doubtful that Tikka is even a minor annoyance to a guy like Lloyd Blankfein. In fact, I bet you he’s smiling.

Martin Luther King was only 26 when he became a leader of the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t know about you, but I find that very inspiring.

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2011-10-01T20:27:00.000-04:00

Mayor Bloomberg Claims ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Are Targeting Bankers Who ‘Are Struggling To Make Ends Meet’

2011-10-01T17:19:00.002-04:00

Think Progress, Sep 30, 2011:

[...]

This morning, while on local radio host John Gambling’s show, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the demonstrations on Wall Street. Bloomberg condemned the protests, claiming that the protesters are targeting people who making “$40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet.” He then went on to say people are focusing too much on the causes of the financial crisis and that we need to be nicer to the banking industry so that it starts lending again. He concluded by saying that we are “blaming the wrong people” by “blaming the banks” for the recession:

GAMBLING: Mr. Mayor, let’s talk about Zuccoti Park and the protesters. How do you end that thing?

BLOOMBERG: The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people that work on Wall Street or on the finance sector. [...] People in this day and age need support for their employers. We need the banks, if the banks don’t go out and make loans we will not come out of our economy problems, we will not have jobs. And so anything we can do to responsibly help the banks do that, encourage them to do that is waht we need. I think we spend much too much time worrying about how we got into problems as to how we go forward. [...] Also we always tend to blame the wrong people. We blame the banks. They were part of it, but so were Frddie Mac and Frannie Mae and Congress.

Listen to it:

Actually, the median salary for stockbrokers is approximately $88,000 a year. But that is besides the point. The demonstrators are not targeting the individuals who work on Wall Street, they are targeting the financial institutions and practices they represent.

Recall, the banks were the primary actors who set off the global recession, and that recession plunged 60 million people into extreme poverty worldwide. By protesting in favor things like a financial transactions tax, Americans can hope to get some of that wealth back from financial institutions that are anything but “struggling to make ends meet.”

Elderly Couple Kidnapped by Texas Adult Protective Services and Ripped Off by Lawyer

2011-10-01T16:43:00.001-04:00

Prophets Of Doom: 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here

2011-10-01T02:05:00.002-04:00

Economic Collapse Blog, 9/30/11:

We are getting so close to a financial collapse in Europe that you can almost hear the debt bubbles popping. All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent. So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money. But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day. Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history. Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis. In addition, there is a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning. The global financial system is a sea or red ink, and when we get to the point where there are hundreds of ships going under how is it going to be possible to bail all of them out? The quotes that you are about to read show that quite a few top financial and political insiders know that things cannot hold together much longer and that a horrific economic crisis is coming. We built the global financial system on a foundation of debt, leverage and risk and now this house of cards that we have created is about to come tumbling down.

[...]

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Report from the Frontlines: Origins of the 99% Movement

2011-09-30T17:28:00.002-04:00

Global Research, 9/29/11:

A Report from the Frontlines: The Long Road to #OccupyWallStreet and the Origins of the 99% Movement

How Anonymous, AmpedStatus, the NYC General Assembly, US Day of Rage, Adbusters and Thousands of Individual Actions Led to the Occupation of Liberty Park and the Birth of a Movement

As the occupation of Wall Street moves into its third week, there are many questions about the organizers behind the ongoing protests and the origins of the 99% Movement. As one of the many people who actively supported the effort, and helped launch the 99% Movement, I will give my perspective on the events leading up to the occupation of Liberty Park.

As I understand it, the #OccuppyWallStreet 99% Movement is a decentralized non-violent rebellion against economic tyranny. It is a leaderless movement that has been dependent upon tens of thousands of individuals taking it upon themselves to take action and fight back against their own personal financial hardships, and in defense of their family and friends who are desperately struggling to make ends meets.

The road that led to the successful occupation has been a long, hard and winding one. When you go to Liberty Park, into the heart of the occupation, you will see a very diverse group of people with opinions across the entire political spectrum. It is the very essence of a ground-up grassroots decentralized movement. Everyone there has their own individual story on what brought them to take such a strong and inspiring stand in support this action. I urge members of the press and people interested in the movement to begin a dialogue with any one of the people taking part. There are many fascinating stories to be heard and a deeper understanding of what’s happening is impossible without hearing from a plurality of voices.

To give some background information, the following is a timeline of my 19-month long personal experience within the movement:

The Birth of the 99% Movement

On February 15th, 2010, AmpedStatus.com published the first-part of an extensive six-part series that I wrote detailing the financial destruction of the US economy. The report is entitled, “The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States.” The first sentence reads:

“It’s time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political reforms.”

The introduction goes on to say:

“It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system are now blatantly rigged against us.

Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep… and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.”

The report quickly went viral and many popular websites picked it up and published it. AlterNet.org featured an adapted excerpt from the report with the headline, “The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class.” It became one of the most popular reports that they have ever published. In aggregate, across many websites that have publish sections of the report, it has received an estimated five million page views.

Soon after the report was released, AmpedStatus formed the 99% Movement based on a general platform put forth in part-six of the report, entitled “How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won.”

As the movement began to build over the course of the next ten months, after a series of TV interviews in which I supported the 99% Movement and called for acts of non-violent civil disobedience, the AmpedStatus.com website was attacked and repeatedly knocked offline. The source of the attacks remains unknown. After publishing investigative reports detailing the fraudulent activities of Wall Street; the destructive impact the financial elite have had upon the American people; revealing direct connections between economic hardships in the US and the uprisings that, at the time, were just beginning to take shape throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe, it was obvious that we were upsetting many powerful forces.

As AmpedStatus was pushing for a decentralized global rebellion against Wall Street and actively supporting the Egyptian uprising against the IMF and Federal Reserve, the attacks on the site escalated. In what appeared to be a fatal blow, the entire ISP network that the AmpedStatus.com site was hosted on was knocked offline, hundreds of sites were also affected and the AmpedStatus.com web hosting provider said that they would no longer be able to host the site unless it was moved to a service that was significantly more than we were paying or could afford. With a very limited budget, and in complete desperation, AmpedStatus put out a call for help.

Anonymous Rides to the Rescue…

As AmpedStatus.com came under attack, Anonymous was playing a key role in supporting the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. When no one else with the needed technical expertise would help us and it became apparent that we would have to shut down our operation, several Anonymous members stepped up and offered to support and defend AmpedStatus.com from further attacks. They assisted in setting up a new hosting account and helped develop a new Independent social network for the 99% Movement. From that point on, AmpedStatus.com has not once been knocked offline due to an attack.

Once we regained our First Amendment rights and knew that we had backing from Anonymous members, we then defiantly released another extensive report in February, 2011 entitled, “Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion – We Are Egypt.”

The introduction states:

“If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics speak for themselves.

In previous Revolution Roundups, before we were knocked offline, we featured mass protests by the people of Ireland, Italy, Britain, Austria, Greece, France and Portugal, as the Global Insurrection contagion spread throughout Europe. And now, as we have seen over the past month, North African and Middle Eastern nations have joined the movement as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Gabon, Mauritania, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria have taken to the streets en masse.

The connection between this latest round of uprisings and the prior protests throughout Europe is one the mainstream media is not making. We are witnessing a decentralized global rebellion against Neo-Liberal economic imperialism. While each national uprising has its own internal characteristics, each one, at its core, is about the rising costs of living and lack of financial opportunity and security. Throughout the world the situation is the same: increasing levels of unemployment and poverty, as price inflation on food and basic necessities is soaring.

Whether national populations realize it or not, these uprisings are against systemic global economic policies that are strategically designed to exploit the working class, reduce living standards, increase personal debt and create severe inequalities of wealth. These global uprising, which have only just begun, are the first wave of the inevitable reaction to the implementation of a centralized worldwide Neo-Feudal economic order.
The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over — from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion…”

[...]

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An Emergency Program for Anti-Wall Street Protestors: Don’t Let Soros Hijack the Movement

2011-09-30T09:35:00.001-04:00

Webster Tarpley on September 29, 2011:

Political mass strike dynamics have been at work in the United States since the Wisconsin and Ohio mobilizations of February and March. Now, there are demonstrations in lower Manhattan and Boston specifically directed against the Wall Street banks. Another protest demonstration is scheduled for Washington, DC, starting on October 6. Good: a political challenge to Wall Street is indeed long overdue.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are skeptical in regard to Obama. There is no sizable constituency for Ron Paul, and the crackpot Austrian school of economics is hardly represented. Above all, there is a desire to break the power of Wall Street. This much is promising, but still not enough to win.

The demonstrations appear initially as leaderless groups, engaged in an organic process of discussion from which specific demands are supposed to emerge. But so far, these demonstrations have put forth no specific demands, reforms, or concrete measures whatsoever to fight Wall Street. This is a fatal political weakness. A movement that attempts to go forward with vague slogans like “Freedom” or “Abolish capitalism” is likely to become easy prey for foundation-funded operatives on the left wing of the Democratic Party.

If a movement pretends to have no leaders, then it is the corporate media, themselves controlled by Wall Street, who will choose the leaders. A few days ago, a Wall Street protester named Kelly Heresy was anointed as principal honcho by Keith Olbermann, who used to work for the hedge fund called General Electric, and who now works for Al Gore. This is no way to select leaders.

The demonstrations may appear spontaneous, but it is easy to see gatekeepers and countergangs operating in their midst, often with a frank counterinsurgency agenda. Occupy Wall Street in particular shows the heavy influence of union bureaucrats from the Service Employees International Union, as well as Acorn – both parts of the Obama machine. The goal of these operatives is to keep the focus of the protests vague and diffuse, so that no demands emerge that might be embarrassing to the Wall Street puppet Obama and his reelection campaign. Their ultimate goal is to absorb the protests as the left wing of the Obama 2012 effort. That means supporting an administration which not only refuses to fight Wall Street, but which is packed with Wall Street executives in its highest positions.

Dubious Hollywood figures like Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore are attempting to gain publicity for themselves by showing up at the demonstrations. Michael Moore, who is not very popular with the demonstrators, was instrumental in leading the antiwar and impeachment movements of the past decade back into the Democratic Party to support Obama. Journalist Matt Taibbi, another newly minted expert on the movement, is remembered for his hatchet jobs in favor of the Bush administration theory of terrorism.

The organizers of the Wall Street action say they want to imitate recent protests in other countries. Their favorite is the Tahrir Square agitation in Egypt in February. But if you go to Cairo today, veterans of those demonstrations will tell you that these efforts accomplished relatively little, and mainly had the effect of ousting an oppressive civilian government in favor of an even more oppressive military government of weak CIA puppets which is still operating under martial law, even as benighted religious fanatics gather strength. In Greece, it is true that the trade unions have mounted a dozen general strikes, but all of these have failed to oust Prime Minister Papandreou, the main enforcer of austerity cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund, and so the brutal austerity continues. The same thing applies to Spain, where the indignados became so self-absorbed in their discussion and consensus process that they never put forward a program to save Spanish society from the bankers. In Iceland too, the anti-bank movement was never able to go beyond mere protest to advance a series of concrete measures that would allow them to contend for power, take power, and hold onto it for the public good.

The lesson of all of these situations is that, in a severe world economic depression of the kind we have today, mere protest is not enough. Desperate populations are looking for political leadership with solutions capable of solving the life or death issues facing nations today. A movement which is incapable of specifying what it intends to fight for is an immature movement which no intelligent person will take seriously.

The secret of a mass strike upsurge is that crisis conditions will propel many apolitical people into activism. This makes them vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues, including those of the extreme right. The mass strike upsurge by itself solves nothing. The question is whether any coherent group of people can intervene into the mass upsurge and push aside bankrupt and failed leaders with the kind of radical reform program that can actually get the society out of the crisis. The masses cannot discover this program on their own – they are too busy with the struggle for daily existence. College students therefore have a special responsibility to provide ideas for the benefit of the entire society. If an adequate program becomes dominant, the nation can survive. Otherwise, nothing guarantees that civilization itself will not collapse – look at the Tea Party if you don’t believe this. Soros, Koch, and the other finance capitalists have a good working understanding of how these things work, which is why they are sending in their operatives to make sure that this movement will have only the vaguest demands, or no demands at all, to fight for. Let that happen, and Wall Street will rule the day once again.

[...]

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Beyond Bologna

2011-09-28T15:32:00.016-04:00

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, Intrepid Report, Information Clearing House and CounterPunch, 9/28/11:

At the Wall Street protest, a young woman carried a sign, “REVOLUTION IS FUN,” and I don’t doubt that she was having a great time, because it can be exhilarating to engage in a just and noble fight, and to feel that you are an agent of change, a participant in history even, and not just one of its faceless victims, as is the common lot. So fun, yes, at least for her, and at least up to that moment, until the violence explodes, as nearly always happens in anything approaching a political revolution.

The violence of September 24th, the 8th day of the anti-Wall Street Protest, appears to not have caused severe or permanent injuries, though it was brutal enough, and some outrage has even flared in the mainstream media. Anthony Bologna, a 28-year-veteran of the New York Police Department, has emerged as a clear cut villain. Without provocation, he pepper sprayed two young women in the faces, and for this he should certainly be fired, then locked up, but this commotion has overshadowed, at least momentarily, the real target and meaning of this protest. Though police brutality is never to be taken lightly, Occupy Wall Street is aiming to expose and hold to account goons much more vicious than any garden variety Anthony Bologna. Though they maim and cripple countless households, even entire countries, these bigger thugs are rarely condemned and never indicted. In fact, some are given plush jobs in the US Treasury, if not a Cabinet appointment.

Who am I talking about, exactly? Here is where it gets murky, and all by intention. (Theirs, not mine.) When people say Wall Street, as in Wall Street has ruined this country, and it certainly has, what do they mean, exactly? Though there are those who object to financial speculation of any kind, most people have in mind the biggest banks when they rail against Wall Street. They’re really talking about Citibank, for example, that gargantuan money-laundering house, or Goldman Sachs, the world’s leading swindling outfit. Their criminality is well documented, though hard to untangle, since most of us are fairly clueless about the intricacies of the dismal science, and since financial, white collar crimes aren’t as vivid as, say, a middle-aged cop pepper spraying the eyes of two defenseless young women, then calmly walking away as they collapse and scream.

But consider this: there are those who defend Bologna even now and think that these “hippie chicks” got what they deserved, just as there were those who saw nothing wrong with cops whacking Rodney King with a baton 56 times, kicking him 6 times, then bragging and joking about it afterwards, and even the sadism of Abu Ghraib was cheered by many Americans, so it often comes down to where you’re coming from, but what kind of bias can blind anyone to the fact that it’s criminal for Stephen Friedman, Chairman of the New York Fed and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, to give 10 billion dollars of our money to Goldman Sachs? Bad publicity over conflict of interest forced Friedman to resign, but if you really think about it, there was no conflict. The Fed can give money to these monster banks because the Fed is owned by these monster banks. If you grant private banks the monopoly to create money, of course they will shower themselves with cash, year in and year out, and use this unlimited power to buy up all of our politicians.

So protest police brutality, media whoredom or governmental corruption all you want, but if you’re willing to overlook the fact that our money supply is controlled by an elite group of criminal bankers, nothing will change. And don’t hold your breath waiting for “our” Attorney General, Eric Holder, to prosecute any of these banksters. Where is Eric Holder, by the way? Has anyone, in any time zone, seen him lately? In any case, the last thing Holder would want to do is to inconvenience, in any way, his true bosses.

Considering the violent police reaction to protesters marching from Liberty Plaza to Union Square, what would have happened had they gone to the Goldman Sachs Headquarters instead? Surely the foot soldiers of empire would not allow the unruly riff raff to desecrate this tall, dignified temple to computerized and three-piece-suited mugging. Kitty-corner from the site of the pulverized Twin Towers, it’s also a Ground Zero. Live, in real time, this is the epicenter of the destruction of the American economy.

Remember that Smith Barney commercial where a sonorous, no-nonsense elderly gentleman intoned, “We make money the old fashioned way. We earn it”? Yeah, right, as in generating money out of nothing, then lending it at interest? As in laundering bloody cash for pushers of heroin or weapons of mass destruction? Smith Barney was owned by Citigroup, a main player in the Federal Reserve. You can’t say these boffo mofos don’t have a fine, sick sense of humor.

Though the mainstream media have stayed clear of this topic, the truths about the Fed are leaking out all over the web, so Big Brother has a solution. The New York Fed is seeking a vendor to help it monitor online conversations about the Federal Reserve. It wants “an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based [on] predefined trigger[s].” This cyber spook will “provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics" and "identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.” With the Fed all eyes and ears, even this trifling article may appear on its radar, so I will take this opportunity to send out an unequivocal greeting to all of our fine banksters, “Gentlemen, for enslaving hard working people, taking food from children, stealing money from senior citizens and degrading countless communities, may all of you be locked up as soon as possible, then rot in hell into eternity.”

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Occupy Wall Street: Its Objects, Issues, and Political Meaning --By definition, the ruling class will always rule.

2011-09-27T00:29:00.002-04:00

Michael Rectenwald at www.legitgov.org 26 Sep 2011:

The Occupy Wall Street protest states its objectives: "to stop corporate greed and corruption on Wall Street and in our political process."

The simple statement and the protest that expresses it appears a reasonable extension of contemporary political discourse, an announcement of complaints that has been voiced by presidential candidates and activists for decades. However, under capitalism, there is no way to remove greed and corruption from Wall Street, or to "get money out of politics."

As for the first prong of the stated demands, ending corporate greed and corruption on Wall Street, one should only note what in fact Wall Street is and does. Wall Street is the exchange house of capitalist expropriation of value. Wall Street exchanges as abstract commodity in a worldwide marketplace profit extracted from the labor process. It also exchanges, through ever-growing layers of speculation, financial products that are further and further removed from the labor process, but which are nevertheless theoretically underwritten by it. Gains and losses on the market by buyers and sellers have to do with bets placed on the exchange value abstracted, however far removed, from labor.

Given that profit is already embedded in the "goods" exchanged on Wall Street, "greed" is utterly, totally, and necessarily intrinsic from the very outset. Capitalism is the systematization of greed and Wall Street is its figural and fiduciary embodiment. Trying to remove greed from Wall Street is like trying to take the blood out of a body and compelling it to walk around. Greed is the blood of capitalism and Wall Street is its heart. To eradicate the domination of systemic greed, we can't remove greed from Wall Street; we must remove Wall Street from the world itself.

Further, capitalism is in a state of systemic crisis. Its paroxysms are felt across the globe and in every locality thereof. Reforms of the FDR variety are being rolled back rather than extended. The era of "progressive" reformism is over and it is not going to return. This is clear if one looks at Europe, where age-old reforms are being undone in nation after nation. Some reform may be necessary and possible in China and India, but in the US and Europe, the political momentum is moving precisely in the opposite direction, and it will not be reversed by "demands" made on reformist terms. The levelling of the international workforce is the order of the day. Rather than curbing the appetite of the capitalist class, the political establishment, in both of its big business parties in the U.S., is involved in feeding it through attacks on the living standards of the vast majority. There will be no reforms of Wall Street that will not be beneficial to Wall Street itself, no matter how they are packaged by the political establishment. Further, the "instruments" of the speculative marketplace multiply faster than any regulators could possibly monitor.

As for the second prong of the demands: removing the influence of money from the political sphere would seem to be a noble and achievable goal. Although the political sphere is separated from the economic sphere by layers of mediation, it should be clear why under existing conditions money cannot and will not be removed from politics. By definition, the ruling class will always rule. And how does the capitalist class express itself politically, if not by means of capital itself? The capitalist class is not going to be hampered by demands that it not express itself politically, using all the means at its disposal. The means at its disposal are many and sundry and include the arsenal of media outlets, capitalist ideology, and the direct political peddling of corporate lobbies, among others. If one outlet is temporarily or partially blocked, the expression will take other routes and the ruling class's interests will nevertheless be represented in the political establishment, which it controls. Given the vast reserve capital holdings of US corporations at present – over two trillion dollars – the ruling class has plenty at its disposal and its expression will not be denied – under existing conditions.

So where does this leave us with regards to Occupy Wall Street? One can rightly remark that the protest is idealist—but not simply in the sense of wearing rose-colored glasses. It is idealist in the sense that it fails to grasp a materialist conception of history. Despite its apparent linking of economics and politics, the protest fails to grasp the economic determinations of the political realm. And so it appears idealistic in the other sense – of demanding what it cannot, by definition, achieve. It lacks a coherent theory and thus its praxis is also flawed. As such, it embarks on an "occupation" that pits an army of police against its vanguard, and exposes that vanguard to police brutality, arrest, incarceration and long-term criminal branding. This is often the case for any political and social unrest under capitalism, but, given that it is not organized as labor, the movement’s demands are easily dismissed by the targets of the protest. No factory owner stands to lose productive capacity due to a labor strike. No Wall Street brokerage firm will be hindered in its trading operations. The protesters are not directly withholding productive capacity from the economic sphere, nor interrupting the exchange of its commodities. Thus, the protest will have no immediate effect on the political sphere. At most, the movement may be awarded a rhetorical nod by the political establishment, but even this appears unlikely.

[...]

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Wall Street 'enemy' of US economy

2011-09-26T19:36:00.004-04:00

Iran's Press TV, Sep 26, 2011:

An American activist and author says the enemy of the United States is “within” the country. Linh Dinh says the “enemy is Wall Street which has been protected by a very corrupt government.”

In his interview with Press TV's U.S. Desk on Monday, Dinh added that anti-Wall Street protesters in New York have "every right to blame Wall Street" for the economic problems it has caused during the past years.

A peaceful sit-in, called 'Occupy Wall Street' protest, began in New York City's financial district last week but it turned violent after police clashed with demonstrators on Saturday arresting dozens of them.

Dinh also accused the U.S. government of "knowing" about Wall Street's wrongdoings but "doing nothing" about them. He noted that the government used American "taxpayers' money to bail out banks" as many investors across the world were losing their savings because of Wall Street policies.

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Identified: NYPD Officer Who Maced Peaceful Protesters

2011-09-26T18:30:00.002-04:00

Common Dreams, 9/26/11:

A photographer has identified the cruel and cowardly NYPD supervisor who point blank maced a penned in group of young women and then slinked away Saturday at the Occupy Wall Street protests:

Deputy Inspector Anthony V. Bologna of the NYPD Patrol Borough Manhattan South.

TAKE ACTION
If you think Deputy Inspector Bologna should be fired and prosecuted for his abuse of power, file an on-line complaint:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
and NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mailnypd.html
and the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board: https://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/complaint.html

Photo/ http://davidscameracraft.blogspot.com

Photo/ http://www.thevillager.com/villager_113/afteryearsoftrouble.html

James Fallows at The Atlantic writes:

According to the NYT, the chief police spokesman, Paul Browne, said that the policeman used pepper spray "appropriately." Great. On the video we can't hear what either side is saying. But at face value, the casualness of the officer who saunters over, sprays right in the women's eyes, and then slinks away without a backward glance, as if he'd just put down an animal, does not match my sense of "appropriate" behavior by officers of the law in a free society.

The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs

2011-09-26T00:41:00.003-04:00

The Economic Collapse Blog, 9/25/11:

The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution". In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any "positive" feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.

You can read this "Request for Proposal" right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes....

"The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal ("RFP") was created in an effort to support FRBNY's Social Media Listening Platforms initiative."

A system like this is not cheap. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important. In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet. It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.

"Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document."

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on "billions of conversations" and to actually determine the "sentiment" of those that are participating in those conversations.

Of course it will be those conversations that are "negative" about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.

"Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers"

Uh oh. So they plan to "identify" key bloggers and influencers?

What exactly do they plan to do once they "identify" them?

"The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube."

Hopefully you understand this already, but nothing posted on the Internet is ever anonymous. Everything on the Internet is gathered by a vast host of organizations and is used for a wide variety of purposes. Data mining has become a billion dollar industry, and it is only going to keep growing.

You may think that you are "anonymous" when you criticize organizations like the Fed, but the truth is that if you are loud enough they will see it and they will make a record of it.

"The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations. It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics."

Why do they need to perform "sentiment analysis"?

If someone is identified as being overly "negative" about the Fed, what will they do about it?

"The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger."

This sounds very much like the kind of "keyword" intelligence gathering systems that are currently in use by major governments around the globe.

Very, very creepy stuff.

Are you disturbed yet?

For those of us that write about the Federal Reserve a lot, this is very sobering news.

I wonder what the Fed will think about the following articles that I have posted on this site....

*Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant: The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once Again

*Celebrating Independence Yet Enslaved To Debt

*19 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is At The Heart Of Our Economic Problems

*Is Ben Bernanke A Liar, A Lunatic Or Is He Just Completely And Totally Incompetent?

*10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created

What is their "Social Media Monitoring Solution" going to think about those articles?

Unfortunately, this is all part of a very disturbing trend.

Recently, a very creepy website known as "Attack Watch" was launched to gather information on those saying "negative" things about Barack Obama.

Suddenly, everyone seems obsessed with what you and I are saying.

This just shows how the power of the alternative media is growing.

Not only that, but it seems as though the government also wants to gather as much information on all of us as possible.

For example, a new rule is being proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would force health insurance companies to submit detailed health care information about all of their customers to the federal government.

Every single day our privacy is being stripped away a little bit more.

But now it is often not just enough for them to know what we are doing and saying. Instead, the "authorities" are increasingly stepping in to silence important voices.

One of the most recent examples of this was when Activistpost was taken down by Google. We are still awaiting word on why this was done.

Sadly, the silencing of Activistpost is far from an isolated incident.

Hordes of YouTube accounts have been shut down for their political viewpoints.

Quite a few very prominent alternative media websites have been censored or attacked because of what they stand for.

So why is this happening? Well, it turns out that the power of the alternative media is growing. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, 43 percent of Americans say that they get their news on national and international issues from the Internet. Back in 1999, that figure was sitting at just 6 percent.

The American people are sick and tired of getting "canned news", and they are increasingly turning to the Internet in a search for the truth.

As I have written about previously, the mainstream media in this country is overwhelmingly dominated by just 6 very powerful corporations....

Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The "news" that we get from various mainstream sources seems to always be so similar. It is as if nearly all mainstream news organizations are reading from the same script. The American people know that they are not getting the whole truth and they have been increasingly looking to alternative sources.

The monopoly over the news that the mainstream media once possessed has been broken. The alternative media is now creating some huge problems for organizations that were once very closely protected by the mainstream media.

The American people are starting to wake up and they are starting to get very upset about a lot of the corruption that has been going on in our society.

But it turns out that the "authorities" don't like it too much when Americans try to actually exercise free speech in America today. For example, you can see recent video of female protesters in New York City being penned in by police and then brutally maced right here.

Are you sickened by that?

You should be.

What the "authorities" want is for us to shut up, sit in our homes and act as if nothing wrong is happening.

Meanwhile, they seem determined to watch us more closely than ever.

So are you going to be afraid to talk negatively about the Federal Reserve now that you know that they are going to be watching what you say on the Internet?

Wall Street vs. Everybody

2011-09-25T22:15:00.009-04:00

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, Reader Supported News, CounterPunch, Intrepid Report and River Cities' Reader, 9/25/11:

“Wall Street got drunk [...] It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.”—George W. Bush

As usual, Bush got it wrong. Wall Street soberly and cynically got the rest of us drunk on dreams of homeownership, a robust stock portfolio and a cozy retirement. This slurry bacchanal was fueled by the housing bubble and, when that exploded in our faces, bailouts saved Wall Street from any hangover, so it’s us who will suffer through a torturous, decades-long headache of a ruined economy.

But who are us, exactly? Us are the poor and the middle class, unions, retirement funds and governments at all levels, federal, state and city. Us are 99%, according to the mostly young protesters at Liberty Park in NYC. Nearly everyone got ripped off, including the cops guarding these protesters. As a protest sign sweetly and innocently demands: “Say Sorry! To All of Us!”

After eight days of protest, over a hundred people have already been arrested. Several have been roughed up, with cops being caught on still and video cameras pepper spraying or yanking the hair of young women, or slamming people to the ground. Sadly, these cops are fighting against their own interest. Bankrupted by Wall Street, cities all over America are laying off policemen left and right. Why defend the crooks of Wall Street, cops, when they have directly caused many of your colleagues to be thrown onto the streets? When you yourself may end up on a park bench in the near future?

The conflict between cops and protesters can be partly attributed to a clash of styles, to the eternal jocks vs. freaks dichotomy, but dear policemen, these young people are actually on your side. In spite of their colorful or eccentric clothing, odd haircuts, tattoos or piercings, they are fighting for you, too. To their credit, the protesters have made overtures to these cops by offering them coffee and water, but the cops, keen to maintain separation, have declined.

During the massive protest at Tiananmen Square, there was initially much fraternization between protesters and soldiers. They conversed, established common cause and did not wish to harm each other, so the government had to truck in troops from distant provinces, many of them not even Han Chinese, to commit the massacre. Also, in that famous photo of the protester who stopped a line of tanks, recall the restraint of that tank driver. Though trained and brought in to kill, this soldier couldn’t do it, at least in that instance.

With these Wall Street skirmishes, and many more battles to come, one has to hope for that solidarity and fraternization. Though the belligerent will always gravitate towards jobs that allow them access to weapons, incorrigible psychotics are relatively few, for even in a gung ho uniform, most men aren’t overeager to inflict pains on another. In fact, before the Vietnam War, most soldiers did not even fire their rifles during battles, though improved reflexive trainings have “corrected” this natural reluctance to kill. United we must stand, Americans, clean cut cops and tattooed protesters alike, against that destroyer of America, Wall Street.

Last wednesday, there was a NYC protest against cuts to the public schools. It took place at Tweed Courthouse, only half a mile from the Occupy Wall Street rally, but unlike the anti-Wall Street activists, these protesters were mostly above 35-years-old, with many of them Black or Hispanic. It would have been wonderful had these public school teachers marched over to the Wall Street protest, for it is precisely Wall Street that has bankrupted their state and city, putting their jobs in jeopardy. Dear teachers, do join these brave young protesters, because Wall Street is also your enemy. Dearest everybody, Wall Street is the vampire who's draining blood from all of our bodies.

Several commentators have pointed out the lack of clarity of the anti-Wall Street rally. What reforms are they after, exactly? Among the many signs at the site, there are those that attack the Federal Reserve, bank bailouts and Corporate Personhood, and for the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, but these key demands are either diluted or enlivened, depending on your temperament, I suppose, by signs that are merely whimsical, vaguely philosophical or even antithetical to this protest. Though I smiled at “OPPOSITION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP,” I had to cringe at “FREE IRAN! MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD IS NOT MY PRESIDENT!”

Whether Iran needs to be liberated or not, it’s not for me to say, but it is surely genocidal to appeal to Americans to “free” yet another Islamic country, and one that has been in Uncle Sam’s crosshair ever since it had the temerity to oust that CIA favorite, the Shah.

In addition to the many, many signs, there are also teach ins and book discussions, so a primary aim of this protest is to educate the public about the flaws of our system, and to articulate possible remedies. It’s crucial, then, that the most important messages not be drown out by irrelevancies and contradictions. There must be a way to keep the main points front and center at all times, so that even the most casual tourist will know what it is he is witnessing.

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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!-

2011-09-24T19:51:00.003-04:00

#OccupyWallStreet:

"While on a peaceful march near Union Square in downtown Manhattan, multiple female protestors were penned up in the street by orange mesh baricade, then maliciously maced.

The women were peaceful and unarmed. They were secured by barricade with an overwhelming police presence. And they were then sprayed directly in the face with pressurized mace...

WeAreTheOther99 continues to peacefully occupy lower Manhattan to begin a dialogue with the Top 1% with the goal of a peaceful transition of power back to the People.

This can no longer be stopped. But be advised, this will not be televised..."

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Day 4 of OccupyWallStreet: At least five arrested, one may be in critical condition

2011-09-20T13:22:00.002-04:00

Published 2011-09-20 05:01:04 UTC by OccupyWallSt

Early this morning at least five protesters were arrested by NYPD.

The first arrest was a protester who objected to the police removing a tarp that was protecting our media equipment from the rain. The police said that the tarp constituted a tent, in spite of it not being a habitat in any way. Police continued pressuring protesters with extralegal tactics, saying that a protester on a bullhorn was breaking a law. The protester refused to cease exercising his first amendment rights and was also arrested. Then the police began to indiscriminately attempt to arrest protesters, many of them unsheathed their batons, in spite of the fact that the protest remained peaceful. One of the protesters received a large gash on their leg, another lost a tooth. Multiple police tackled a protester and sat on him as he continually warned them that he was experiencing an asthma attack. One of the medics on site informed the police that they needed to call an ambulance because this was a potentially fatal circumstance. They ignored him. We have no current information on this protester, but we hope that he hasn't been murdered by the police.

We are determined to remain a peaceful protest, in spite of the brutality we have witnessed.

Updates will be posted as we receive them.

This Constant Mind Rape

2011-09-18T14:53:00.010-04:00

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Information Clearing House, Intrepid Report and Loza Bez Tajemnic, 9/18/11:

The physical violence of a crime is often accompanied by another kind of violation, an assault against the mind, for the criminal must disguise his evil deed. A murderer, rapist or merely adulterer will lie and spin, to conceal and/or rationalize what he has done.

For an empire, then, whose crimes are myriad, for it takes so much violence to maintain worldwide dominion, this assault against the mind is relentless, a blanket of nonsense that suffocates night and day, a miasma of photo ops and jive that poisons the conscience.

Thus, a chirpy CNN reporter talked about “terrorists” attacking the US Embassy in Afghanistan. She didn’t even called them “insurgents,” but simply and unequivocally “terrorists,” “terrorists,” “terrorists,” like a mantra, as she excitedly recounted how they had disguised themselves as women before overwhelming Afghan cops guarding a unfinished high-rise, killing them. Their aim was to gain a vantage point to rain rockets onto the US Embassy.

Of course, the CNN reporter could not point out that these men were classic nationalists, for a nationalist is one willing to defend his homeland against a foreign invader. Also, this paid-for mouth piece could not admit that these men were courageous and bold, as well as noble and selfless, for they had no escape plan. They were trapped inside that building. They knew that as they attacked, they would be surrounded by American soldiers, yet to do what was just and laudable to their own people, these brave individuals were willing to be killed by their hated enemy. They chose death and honor before subjugation and humiliation. Patrick Henry should be proud of them.

After this incident, US officials accused Pakistan of being the mastermind. Besides justifying continued drone and missile strikes against Pakistan itself, this charge also discredited the attackers as foreign agents and mercenaries, but let’s think about this for a second. A mercenary fights for money. He doesn’t choose certain death. Any Afghan willing to die battling foreign invaders, be them Americans or Soviets, is a nationalist, period.

Similarly, a Libyan is a nationalist if he’s fighting the vast American-led coalition, this oil-soaked crusade of mostly white, Christian countries that’s been attacking Libya for over six months now, but, no, the American media are calling him a “Gaddafi loyalist.”

Such deformation of facts also affects American victims of empire. When Pat Tillman was shot at close range by an American soldier, he was presented as a hero killed in action, a victim of the Taliban. A death loses its meaning and dignity when it’s perverted to serve someone else’s interest, and when a corpse is used to glorify the murderer, you have one of the worst of possible crimes, something akin to necrophilia. The empire will kill you, then screw you. It will derive pleasure from your cadaver.

Likewise, though it has been proven in court that the US government was behind the killing of Martin Luther King, he now has a huge statue on the National Mall, the very Mall where he organized Resurrection City, a poor people’s protest which hastened his assassination. With typical cynicism, our government is celebrating and appropriating a man it exterminated in cold blood.

Likewise, 9/11. It was nauseating for me to watch the ten-year commemoration of that tragedy without any airtime given to those who desperately wanted to probe deeper into exactly what happened. The many architects, engineers, pilots, first responders and relatives of victims who doubted the official version 9/11 were shunted aside so a self-justifying and congratulatory narrative from this criminal government could proceed without interruptions. This was the moment for sinister butchers like Bush and Obama to appear caring and statesmanlike, as father figures consoling us in our moment of grief, when they are in fact the authors of so much past and ongoing grief.

The truths about many key events in this nation’s history, Pearl Harbor Attack, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Martin Luther King’s, John’s and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations, etc., have never fully come out, or only came out decades after the fact, so Americans should have learnt to suspect, by now, routine duplicity from Washington, yet many of us continue to believe. Such is the power of brainwashing. As they kill and lie in our names, we keep nodding and nodding.

We are not expected to ask questions, but merely to swallow whole the spoon-fed kitsch and bullshit. Recently, Americans were shown a photo of a dog that refused to leave the coffin of his master, a dead SEAL member, one of those “heroes” who supposedly killed Bin Laden. Though there was no physical proof whatsoever, no corpse, film or photo, we were told that a successful raid had occurred, and though an American helicopter tail was left behind, no American had died, incredibly, then we were told, three months later, that 22 of the SEALs involved, i.e., potential witnesses who could contradict the official narrative, were conveniently killed in an unprecedented attack by the Taliban.

These fairy tales are so bizarre but, before you can pause to parse one, if you’re so inclined, and most of us are no longer inclined or capable, another one comes down the chute, then another, then another. When one commits as many killings, lootings and rapes as this government does, one must lie constantly.

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9/11: A Conspiracy Theory

2011-09-16T16:44:00.002-04:00

James Corbett, 9/11/11:

The "Critics" of 9/11 Truth. Do They Have a Case?

2011-09-13T19:12:00.002-04:00

Paul Craig Roberts at Global Research, 9/13/11:

The short answer to the question in the title is no.

The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.

Let’s examine the case against "the truthers" presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.

But first let’s define who "the truthers" are.

The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of "9/11 conspiracy theorists".

Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.

Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories.

9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.

For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.

The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.

The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings.

It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones.

It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes.

It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.

The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists.

When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.

When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.

When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel--and their testimony is backed up with photographs--in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there.

When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.

When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.

It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.

That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.

What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29113.htm

Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?

Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.

Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here. http://barnhardt.biz/

Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.”

Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.

Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.

Now we come to Alexander Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.

Cockburn avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents--scores of them--methodically planted demolition charges.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years/

Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”

Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.

Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Cockburn does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Cockburn writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon--they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both--stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”

If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.

I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometimes. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.

Cockburn’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.

Cockburn's willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.

Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.

Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?

They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.

Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.

There is no 9/11 debate.

On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks.

The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.

Further reading at:

	THE 9/11 "BIG LIE". WHEN FICTION BECOMES FACT - by Global Research - 2011-09-11
	Articles and documentation on 9/11 from Global Research

Even a top cop concedes a right to video arrests - but the street tells a different story

2011-09-03T15:17:00.002-04:00

Philadelphia Daily News, Sep. 3, 2011:

TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head - over and over - into the hood of a police cruiser.

Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said.

But then the cops turned on them.

Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken.

Meanwhile, two officers approached Hurling, urged her to leave and, after exchanging a few words, slammed her against a police cruiser, Hurling said. They pulled her by her hair before tossing her into the back of a cop car, she said.

Although it's legal to record Philadelphia police performing official duties in public, all three were charged with disorderly conduct and related offenses, and officers destroyed Hurling and Riley's cellphones, erasing any record of Medley's violent arrest, the pair said.

Charges against Hurling and Riley were dismissed, but Medley was found guilty last month of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, harassment and related offenses. She was fined $500 but has filed an appeal.

Echoes of the incident, which was corroborated by a half-dozen witnesses, have been reverberating nationwide in recent years as the combination of cellphone video and police officers has simmered into what is an increasingly explosive formula. A growing number of bystanders have been misled, arrested or worse for using their cellphones to record what they perceive as excessive force by cops making arrests, watchdogs say.

"I grew up in the neighborhood and I saw stuff go down but it never happened to me," Riley said recently, adding that he did nothing wrong. "They stomped my phone and said it was a federal offense."

[...]

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Photographing a Rittenhouse cop leads to disorderly conduct charge - later dismissed

2011-09-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

Philadelphia Daily News, Sep. 3, 2011:

BEING LED out of Rittenhouse Square in handcuffs wasn't on Coulter Loeb's list of things to do during his summer in Philadelphia, but that's what happened last month to the University of Cincinnati student.

The reason? Police said he was interfering with a police investigation when he tried to photograph a cop escorting a transient woman out of the park on July 14.

"He said I needed to stop taking pictures and walk away," Loeb recalled recently.

With the advancement of digital technology, Loeb's story demonstrates a growing trend locally and nationally of clashes between civilians and the police officers they record or photograph.

Loeb, 23, a senior and a photographer at the university's student paper, was staying with a friend on Bainbridge Street near 22nd when he decided to take pictures in the square.

According to a police report, it was about 1 p.m. and police were conducting pedestrian investigations at the park when Loeb approached the officer and the woman, later identified as Sydni. Loeb asked Sydni if he could take her picture, the report says.

Loeb said he was trailing at least 20 feet behind the pair when the cop ordered him to walk in another direction. Loeb told the Daily News that he refused the order.

"As this was interfering with the police actions, police stated to defendant that he may take all of the pictures he wanted but he must leave the immediate area," the report continued.

Loeb, who had his press credentials in his back pocket, was arrested after he didn't heed the officer's requests and was charged with disorderly conduct. That charge was dismissed last week.

He hasn't filed a complaint with Internal Affairs, but he wrote a letter to the Police Department and sent it to the local website Philebrity, which posted it online.

"To me, I thought that it was my civil right to document how the agents of the people's government treat our least fortunate citizens," wrote Loeb. "To you, I was 'interfering with a police investigation' - causing enough distress that you felt it necessary to intimidate, restrain and arrest me after telling me that I could not take pictures."

Loeb has been in contact with the American Civil Liberties Union. "It was definitely intimidation by the police," Loeb said in an interview. "He didn't like me doing something that was my right."

The decade's biggest scam

2011-09-02T13:43:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald, 8/29/11:

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

[...]

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Backpack Farms

2011-08-28T23:25:00.000-04:00

• Download Training Manual

More than 14 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of international food aid. At the same time, Africa has the agricultural potential not only to feed the continent, but also the world.

During the 2010 World Food Confernece, Kofi Annan said "improving the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of smallholder farming is the main pathway out of poverty in using agriculture for development."

In response to these efforts, the Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) is designed as an all-in-one canvas backpack packaged with all the essential agriculture inputs needed for small landholders to standardize both the quality and quantity of agriculture production during an annual growing season, to mirror semi-commercial rates of production. Most important, farmers receive training on how best to use the backpack tools as well as build their core capacity.

The Backpack Farm Agricultural Program (BPF) provides not just biological farming supplements and training but a complete 5 phase program ensuring smallholder farmers to increase their harvests and improve their qualities of life. Together, it is possible to achieve sustainable linkages in food production, value chains, credible finance, income generation, social and ecological domains.

[...]

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An artist's incendiary painting is his bank statement

2011-08-28T17:40:00.003-04:00

Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2011:

Alex Schaefer's depiction of a Chase branch going up in flames drew the attention of L.A. police, who asked if he was a terrorist. He said the work was a metaphor for the havoc banking practices have caused the economy.

Standing before an easel on a Van Nuys sidewalk, Alex Schaefer dabbed paint onto a canvas.

"There you have it," he said. "Inflammatory art."

The 22-by-28-inch en plein air oil painting is certainly hot enough to inflame Los Angeles police.

Twice they've come to investigate why the 41-year-old Eagle Rock artist is painting an image of a bank building going up in flames.

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."

[...]

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Latino-indigenous Mexican divide stirs Calif. town

2011-08-28T07:11:00.001-04:00

GOSIA WOZNIACKA of AP, 8/13/11:

GREENFIELD, Calif. —Down wind-swept El Camino Real, where women in shawls push strollers and old men in cowboy hats linger on dusty benches, farmworkers spill from white contractor buses. From the main drag, it's only blocks to the fields and vineyards that sustain this peaceful town in the Salinas Valley, "the Salad Bowl of the World."

But there's tension in this part of John Steinbeck Country.

Nearly all of Greenfield's 16,300 people are Latino - and yet an ugly conflict has been brewing between longer-time residents and newcomers from another part of Mexico. Established residents say a massive influx of migrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca has changed their city for the worse.

[...]

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CONFIRMED: Libya War is CIA Op 30 Years in the Making

2011-08-27T14:36:00.001-04:00

Tony Cartalucci at Prisonplanet.com, Aug 27, 2011:

Alternative media activist David Icke, who has been warning about the false nature of the “Arab Spring” since it began over six months ago, has pointed out an astounding “flashback” regarding an August 3, 1981 Newsweek article titled, “A Plan to Overthrow Kaddafi.”

‘The details of the plan were sketchy, but it seemed to be a classic CIA destabilization campaign. One element was a “disinformation” program designed to embarrass Kaddafi and his government. Another was the creation of a “counter government” to challenge his claim to national leadership. A third — potentially the most risky — was an escalating paramilitary campaign, probably by disaffected Libyan nationals, to blow up bridges, conduct small-scale guerrilla operations and demonstrate that Kaddafi was opposed by an indigenous political force.”

….

Quite obviously this plan has been executed verbatim with the necessary addition of a NATO intervention to rescue the above stated “paramilitary” campaign from Libyan security forces – a contigency plan explicitly spelled out in another Wall Street-London subsidized, signed confession, Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?”

Using Military Force to Assist Popular Revolutions, page 109-110 (page 122-123 of the PDF): ”Consequently, if the United States ever succeeds in sparking a revolt against the clerical regime, Washington may have to consider whether to provide it with some form of military support to prevent Tehran from crushing it.” ”This requirement means that a popular revolution in Iran does not seem to fit the model of the “velvet revolutions” that occurred elsewhere. The point is that the Iranian regime may not be willing to go gently into that good night; instead, and unlike so many Eastern European regimes, it may choose to fight to the death. In those circumstances, if there is not external military assistance to the revolutionaries, they might not just fail but be massacred.

[...]

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Frénésie de pillages: En buvant une bière bon marché, je pensais à la Réserve Fédérale

2011-08-20T11:21:00.002-04:00

Traduit par Dominique Muselet pour Le Grand Soir, 20 août 2011:

Allez, je vous emmène au McGlinchey, le bar le moins cher du centre ville. Quand j’y suis allé pour la première fois en 1982, je n’avais que 18 ans et pour avoir l’air d’avoir l’âge légal j’avais mis un vieux veston d’homme que j’avais payé deux dollars dans une solderie. Dans le bar, j’avais découvert avec émerveillement qu’une pression ne valait que 50 cents et un hotdog 25 cents. Aujourd’hui, ils coûtent respectivement 1,25 dollar et 75 cents. Le bar est toujours très bon marché comme je les aime, mais c’est l’inflation.

L’inflation est la déflation de vos dollars. Votre argent perd de la valeur encore, encore et encore et se déprécie au fur et à mesure que la Réserve Fédérale injecte plus de dollars dans le système bancaire. Et puisque les plus grandes banques sont propriétaires de la Réserve Fédérale, la Fed est le système bancaire. Chaque fois que ces banques se créent des liquidités en vous accordant des prêts à intérêts, vos dollars perdent un peu plus de valeur.

Bien qu’elle soit considérée par la plupart des Etasuniens comme une organisation gouvernementale, la Réserve fédérale reconnaît elle-même qu’elle est "une entité indépendante à l’intérieur du gouvernement qui a en même temps des objectifs publiques et des aspects privés." En tant que "entité indépendante" la Fed n’est contrôlée ni par la présidence ni par le Congrès. Pourtant son conseil d’administration est nommé par le président des Etats-Unis pour 14 ans (!), un de ses membres seulement étant remplacé tous les deux ans. Loin des projecteurs ces hommes de l’ombre restent en poste plus longtemps que tous nos présidents, sénateurs et membres du Congrès et sont certainement plus puissants puisqu’ils représentent les banques qui financent tous nos politiciens qui sont leur abjects serviteurs. La Fed a aussi le pouvoir de provoquer l’inflation et la déflation de l’économie mondiale, de l’étrangler, la violer et la saigner à mort. Avec un tel pouvoir, elle se moque pas mal qu’un audit du Congrès, le premier jamais effectué, ne dévoile qu’elle a prêté 16 100 milliards de dollars à Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch et Bank of America, ainsi qu’à des banques anglaises, allemandes, suisses, françaises et belges. La somme astronomique dépasse notre dette nationale et même notre PIB, alors de quelle partie des enfers ou de Foggy Bottom (*) venait-elle ? D’aucune ! Elle s’est matérialisée comme par miracle. Avec une puissance quasi-divine, la Fed peut faire apparaître des liquidités et donc à peu près tout ce qu’elle veut. Ici un domaine, là un yacht et aujourd’hui il suffit de frapper quelques touches sur un clavier pour engendrer un tout nouvel esclave ou beaucoup, beaucoup d’esclaves.

De manière subconsciente - Papa envoie-nous de l’argent - les personnes infantiles croient que chaque nouvelle injection de dollars dans le système profite à tous, mais si l’assouplissement quantitatif (**) était une solution magique, la république de Weimar et Zimbabwe seraient des exemples de réussite. Si on pouvait résoudre tous nos problèmes en créant de la monnaie, alors pourquoi ne pas rembourser toutes nos dettes tout de suite avec des billets tout neufs en s’épargnant le douloureux règlement des intérêts ? Pourquoi ne pas relancer l’économie en distribuant à chaque citoyen un gros chèque ? Pas 600 pauvres dollars comme a fait Bush, mais un milliard de dollars à chaque homme, femme, enfant et chien ? On ne peut pas le faire parce que nos créditeurs ne sont pas idiots. Comme l’a dit Vladimir Poutine en parlant de nous : "Ils vivent comme des parasites sur le dos de l’économie mondiale grâce au monopole du dollar." C’est pourquoi cela n’a ni rassuré ni amusé la Russie, la Chine, le Japon, le Brésil et tous nos autres créditeurs quand Allan Greenspan a dit que "les USA peuvent rembourser toutes leurs dettes parce qu’ils peuvent toujours imprimer de la monnaie pour le faire."

Avant la Réserve Fédérale nous disait combien de dollars étaient en circulation mais en mars 2006 ils ont arrêté de le faire. Un homme sain d’esprit en déduirait qu’ils veulent nous cacher le taux de l’inflation, mais pas du tout, cette soudaine opacité n’était qu’une mesure de réduction des coûts comme nous l’a expliqué la Fed, cette prodigue pompe à fric.

Pour vous rendre compte à quelle vitesse votre dollar se déprécie, regardez simplement le cours de l’or. En 1982 une once d’or valait 500 dollars. Aujourd’hui elle atteint 1800 dollars. La hausse du cours de l’or montre aussi que les gens perdent confiance dans leur système économique, politique et social et que le futur proche leur paraît incertain. Quand l’or grimpe, la valeur de cette maison baisse. Promenez-vous dans les quartiers vietnamiens et cambodgiens, vous verrez qu’un nombre incroyable de bijouteries vendent de l’or. Ceux qui ont été traumatisés par la guerre et la dictature ne font pas confiance aux banques ni même à la monnaie, mais croient que l’or seul leur permettra de survivre en cas de bouleversement sociétal.

Mais si le dollar sombre, pourquoi en faire des réserves ? D’abord les gouvernements étrangers doivent avoir des dollars pour acheter du pétrole car aucun pays ne peut vendre de pétrole autrement qu’en dollars. Les seuls à ne pas respecter cette règle sont l’Iran et le Venezuela. En acceptant des yuans chinois contre leur pétrole, ils vivent sous la menace perpétuelle des représailles de Washington. Si les euros, les yuans et les roubles étaient acceptés en paiement du pétrole, les USA ne seraient plus indispensables et plus personne ne serait obligé de nous donner de vraies marchandises en échange d’un papier-monnaie en perte de valeur constante.

L’arrangement des pétrodollars est imposé par l’armée étasunienne. Comme Saddam Hussein and Mouammar Kadhafi s’en sont aperçus, les USA font pleuvoir des bombes sur ceux qui essaient d’échapper à ce racket. Kadhafi voulait nationaliser les champs de pétrole de la Libye. Il proposait aussi une monnaie commune à l’Afrique pour que les nations africaines soient libérées de la tyrannie du dollar dans leur commerce entre elles, mais une telle insolence ne pouvait pas rester impunie. Les USA vont vous tenir un pistolet sur la tempe pour s’assurer que vous continuez à consommer ses dollars.

En faisant des profits avec les intérêts, les banques fabriquent de la dette pour vous et moi et pour le gouvernement lui-même. Le système surnage parce que nous nous noyons et pour que nous continuions à dépenser plus que nous gagnons, il suscite en nous des désirs fous. D’où la séduction qui nous assaille sans cesse de partout. Ne réfléchissez pas, ne pensez pas. Abandonnez-vous à la luxure. En 1982, il y avait seulement une télévision dans le bar McGlinchey, maintenant il y en a quatre. Au son d’une musique assourdissante, les réclames défilent en scintillant au dessus de nos têtes. Achetez ci, achetez ça, baise-moi ou plutôt fais l’amour au mirage que je suis.

Les vertus traditionnelles comme la prudence et le self-contrôle sont jetées par dessus bord et sont remplacées par un appétit insatiable qui engendre frustration, ennui, insensibilité et violence. En 2009, à cinq rues d’ici, une flash mob a attaqué un homme de 56 ans qui rentrait du travail à vélo. On l’a battu jusqu’à l’inconscience et on lui a volé sa carte de crédit. Un des coupables a alors acheté pour plus de 5000 dollars de produits Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani et autres marques à la mode. Il s’est fait livrer le butin chez lui et c’est ce qui a conduit à l’arrestation de Stephen Lyde, un jeune homme de 21 ans. Bien qu’il soit pauvre et ignore clairement comment fonctionne une carte de crédit, Lyde enviait toutes les belles choses que possèdent ceux qui sont en haut de l’échelle et comme beaucoup d’autres il était prêt à se les procurer par la violence. A la différence des escrocs en cols blancs cependant, Lyde, dépouillait ses victimes directement. Si les USA se lançaient dans une guerre de plus, la majorité des détenteurs d’actions ne se réjouiraient-ils pas ?

Notre système bancaire fait des profits à partir de rien, nous prête de l’argent qu’il n’a pas et avec le soutien de la force de frappe de Washington, fait en sorte que ce que nous possédons vaille de moins en moins cher pendant que nous travaillons de plus en plus pour rembourser et rembourser sans fin des prêts avec des intérêts composés, des pénalités, des honoraires et tout ce qu’ils ont envie d’y rajouter encore. La Réserve Fédérale n’est donc pas une institution avec "des objectifs publiques et des aspects privés", mais exactement le contraire. Comme notre gouvernement fédéral lui-même, c’est un cartel dont les impitoyables objectifs privés sont cachés derrière une façade publique.

La Fed a des objectifs privés et des aspects publiques et aussi longtemps que ce parasite contrôlera nos bourses et notre gouvernement, vous pouvez vous attendre à plus de guerres, plus de faillites et de saisies, à une inflation de plus en plus importante et à une intensification des frénésies de pillages de toutes sortes.

[Original]

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Pienso en la Reserva Federal de EE.UU. y me tomo una cerveza barata

2011-08-19T10:13:00.003-04:00

Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Germán Leyens:

Oye, vayamos a McGlinchey’s, el bar más barato en Center City. Cuando entré a ese lugar por primera vez en 1982 tenía solo 18 años, de modo que para parecer más legal, me puse una chaqueta de viejo, comprada en una tienda de segunda mano por dos dólares. Adentro, me encantó descubrir que un vaso de cerveza de barril Rolling Rock costaba solo 50 centavos, y un perrito caliente 25. Ahora valen 1,25 dólares y 75 centavos, respectivamente. Ese bar de mala muerte, mi clase, sigue siendo baratísimo, pero así es la inflación.

La inflación son tus dólares que se desvalorizan. Es tu dinero que cae, cae, cae, depreciándose a medida que la Reserva Federal inyecta más dólares a nuestro sistema bancario. Y ya que los mayores bancos son los dueños de la Reserva Federal, la Fed es el sistema bancario. Cada vez que esos bancos se otorgan dinero para prestártelo con intereses, tus dólares pierden un poco de valor.

Aunque es percibida por la mayoría de los estadounidenses como una agencia gubernamental, incluso la Reserva Federal admite que es “una entidad independiente dentro del gobierno, que tiene propósitos públicos y aspectos privados”. Como “entidad independiente” la Fed no sufre de control presidencial o de supervisión del Congreso. Aunque su Consejo de Gobernadores es nombrado por el presidente de EE.UU., cada uno de sus siete miembros sirve durante 14 años (¡!) y solo un miembro se reemplaza cada dos años. Ocultos de la atención pública, esos sospechosos señores son más durables que todos nuestros presidentes, senadores y congresistas, y ciertamente más poderosos, ya que representan a bancos que financian a todos nuestros políticos, sus abyectos sirvientes. La Fed también puede inflacionar, deflacionar, estrangular, violar o desangrar la economía global. Con tanta influencia, no le importa que una auditoría del Congreso en 2011, la primera, haya logrado descubrir que en menos de tres años la Fed prestó 16,1 billones [millones de millones] de dólares a Citygroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch y Bank of America, así como a bancos del Reino Unido, Alemania, Suiza, Francia y Bélgica. Esta suma astronómica es mayor que nuestra deuda nacional o incluso que el PIB, de modo que, ¿de dónde diablos provino? De ninguna parte. Apareció sin rastro. Con poder divino, la Fed puede exorcizar la vida con dinero, y por lo tanto casi todo lo demás. Aquí una mansión, allí un yate, y ahora, con unas pocas pulsaciones en el teclado, un esclavo de primera mano, ¡o muchos, muchos esclavos!

Inconscientemente el pensamiento, papito, envíanos dinero, los infantiles ven cada gran aumento de suministro de dinero como dólares que se derraman por el sistema, beneficiando a todos, pero si la distensión cuantitativa fuera una bala mágica, Weimar y Zimbabue serían historias exitosas. Si pudiéramos monetizar un camino para salir de líos, ¿por qué no pagar todas nuestras deudas ahora mismo con dinero recién producido y evitar los dolorosos pagos de intereses? ¿Por qué no reanimar esta economía enviando un inmenso cheque a cada ciudadano? No unos miserables 600 dólares, como hizo Bush, ¿sino mil millones de dólares a cada hombre, mujer, niño y perro? No es posible porque nuestros acreedores no son tontos. Como dijo Vladimir Putin de nosotros: “Viven como parásitos de la economía global y su monopolio del dólar”. Por lo tanto Rusia, China, Japón, Brasil y los demás numerosos acreedores de nuestro país no se sintieron reasegurados ni divertidos cuando Allan Greenspan explicó que “EE.UU. puede pagar cualquier deuda que tiene porque siempre podemos imprimir dinero para hacerlo”.

La Reserva Federal solía decirnos cuántos dólares había en circulación, pero en marzo de 2006 dejó de hacerlo. Un hombre cuerdo deduciría que quería ocultar cuánta inflación estaba generando, pero no, esa repentina opacidad fue simplemente una medida de reducción de costes, explicó la Fed, la pródiga Fed que chorreaba dinero.

Para comprender de inmediato cuánto se ha depreciado tu dólar, basta con considerar el precio del oro. En 1982, una onza valía menos de 500 dólares. Ahora ha sobrepasado los 1.800. El aumento del precio del oro también indica que la gente está perdiendo confianza en su sistema económico, político y social, y que teme por el futuro inmediato. Cuando se dispara el oro, la casa se va cayendo. Id a algún vecindario vietnamita o camboyano y veréis una cantidad extraordinaria de negocios de joyería que venden oro. La gente traumatizada por la guerra y la dictadura no confía en los bancos o incluso en el dinero, sino solo en el oro para que le ayude a sobrevivir cualquier desorden social.

De modo que si el dólar está bajando, ¿para qué acumularlo? Ante todo, los gobiernos extranjeros tienen que tener dólares para comprar petróleo, porque ningún país puede vender petróleo por otra cosa que dólares. Los únicos renegados de esta regla son Irán y Venezuela. Al aceptar yuanes chinos por petróleo, han sido constantemente amenazados por Washington. Si euros, yuanes, yens, o rublos fueran generalmente aceptados por petróleo, EE.UU. se convertiría rápidamente en irrelevante y nadie tendría que enviarnos productos reales por nuestro papel cada vez más despreciable.

Este sistema del petrodólar ha sido impuesto por los militares de EE.UU. Como descubrieron Sadam Hussein y Muamar Gadafi, EE.UU. hará llover bombas sobre las cabezas de tu pueblo si tratas de escapar de este chanchullo. Gadafi quiso nacionalizar los campos petroleros de Libia. También propuso una moneda común para África. En su comercio entre ellos, los países africanos podrían entonces liberarse de la tiranía del dólar, pero una insolencia semejante no podía pasar sin castigo. EE.UU. te pondría una pistola en la sien para asegurarse de que sigas tragando su moneda.

Al ganar dinero con intereses, los bancos generan deuda para ti y para mí, y para el propio gobierno. El sistema se rescata para que no nos ahoguemos y para asegurar que sigamos gastando más allá de nuestros medios, tiene que hacer que deliremos con deseos. De ahí la interminable seducción por dondequiera se mire. No pienses o reflexiones. Deseo. En 1982, había solo un televisor en McGlinchey’s. Ahora hay cuatro. Mientras resuena la música, los incesantes señuelos parpadean sobre nuestras cabezas. Compra esto, compra eso, jódeme, o más bien, ama mi espejismo.

Virtudes tradicionales como prudencia y autocontrol han sido descartadas y reemplazadas por un apetito insaciable que alimenta la frustración, el aburrimiento, el adormecimiento y la violencia. En 2009, a cinco cuadras de aquí, una turba repentina atacó a un hombre de 56 años que iba del trabajo a su casa. Lo golpearon hasta dejarlo inconsciente y le robaron sus tarjetas de crédito. Uno de los perpetradores se compró entonces 5.000 dólares de mercancías de Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani y otras de lujo. Ordenó que el botín se entregases en su casa, y así capturaron a Stephen Lyde de veintiún años. Aunque pobre, y obviamente sin experiencia con una tarjeta de crédito, Lyde deseaba todas las cosas finas que poseían los de arriba, y exactamente como muchos de ellos, estaba dispuesto a la violencia. A diferencia de los pillos elegantes, sin embargo, Lyde golpeó directamente a su víctima. Si EE.UU. fuera a comenzar una guerra más, ¿cuántos accionistas se alegrarían?

Nuestro sistema bancarios gana dinero de la nada, nos presta dinero que ni siquiera tiene, y con Washington como su protector y vigilante, asegura que poseamos cada vez menos, mientras trabajamos más y más para hacer un pago tras otro interminable pago, con interés compuesto, multas, honorarios y todo lo demás que se le ocurre que puede seguir agregando. La Reserva Federal, por lo tanto, no es una institución con “propósitos públicos y aspectos privados”, sino todo lo contrario. Como nuestro propio gobierno federal, es un cártel con objetivos privados implacables ocultos tras una fachada pública.

La Fed tiene propósitos privados y aspectos públicos, y mientras ese parásito controle nuestras billeteras y nuestro gobierno, podemos contar con más guerras, bancarrota, embargos, una inflación cada vez más severa y frenéticos saqueos de todo tipo.

[Original]

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An audio file

2011-08-18T10:10:00.003-04:00

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of Ken Rose interviewing me on 8/15/11.

I highly urge you to check out all of Ken's interviews. With Tainter, Heinberg, Kunstler, Orlov, Zerzan and Zinn, et al, I can't think of a more impressive lineup, with yours truly merely a mushroom among oaks. Oh, well.

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Police Chief Confirms Detaining Photographers Within Departmental Policy

2011-08-17T22:56:00.001-04:00

Greggory Moore in Long Beach Post, 8/15/11:

A photograph shot by Sander Roscoe Wolff on June 30 before he was detained by Long Beach Police

9:45am | Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.1

"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."

[...]

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Looting Frenzies

2011-08-16T16:19:00.019-04:00

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Intrepid Report, Rebelión and Le Grand Soir, 8/16/11:

Hey, let’s go into McGlinchey’s, the cheapest bar in Center City. When I first entered this place in 1982, I was only 18, so to make myself look somewhat legal, I wore an old man jacket, bought at a thrift store for 2 bucks. Inside, I was thrilled to discover that a draft of Rolling Rock was only 50 cents, and a hotdog 25. Now they are $1.25 and 75 cents, respectively. This low life bar, my kind, is still dirt cheap, but that’s inflation for you.

Inflation is your dollars deflating. It’s your money going down, down, down, depreciating as the Federal Reserve injects more bucks into our banking system. And since the biggest banks own the Federal Reserve, the Fed is the banking system. Each time these banks give cash to themselves to be lent to you at interest, your dollars become a bit more worthless.

Though perceived by most Americans as a governmental agency, even the Federal Reserve admits that it is “an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.” As “an independent entity,” the Fed does not suffer from Presidential control or Congressional oversight. Though its Board of Governor is appointed by the President of the United States, each of its seven members serves for 14 years [!], with only one member replaced every two years. Out of the limelight, these shady gentlemen are more enduring than all of our Presidents, Senators and Congressmen, and certainly more powerful, since they represent banks that bankroll all of our politicians, who are their abject servants. The Fed can also inflate, deflate, strangle, rape or bleed dry the global economy. With such leverage, it does not care that a 2011 Congressional audit, the first ever, managed to discover that in less than three years the Fed lent $16.1 trillion to Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, as well as banks in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium. This astronomical sum is greater than our national debt or even the GDP, so where in hell or Foggy Bottom did it come from? Nowhere. From thin air. With Godlike power, the Fed can just conjure up cash, and thus just about everything else, into being. Here a mansion, there a yacht, and now, with a few keyboard strokes, a brand new slave, or many, many slaves!

Subconsciously thinking, Daddy, send us money, the infantile sees each gross increase in the money supply as dollars sloshing through the system, benefiting everyone, but if quantitative easing were a magic bullet, Weimar and Zimbabwe would be success stories. If we could just monetize our way out of trouble, then why not pay all of our debts right now with newly minted cash, and bypass the painful interest payments? Why not revive this economy by sending each citizen a huge check? Not 600 piddly bucks, like Bush did, but a billion dollars for each man, woman, child and dog? It can’t be done because our creditors aren’t dummies. As Vladimir Putin said about us, “They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar.” So Russia, China, Japan, Brazil and our many other creditors were neither reassured nor amused when Allan Greenspan explained that “the U.S. can pay any debt that it has because we can always print money to do that.”

The Federal Reserve used to tell us how many dollars were in circulation, but in March of 2006, it stopped. A sane man would deduce that it wanted to hide how much inflation it was generating, but, no, this sudden opacity was merely a cost cutting measure, so explained the Fed, the profligate, money pumping Fed.

To grasp immediately how much your dollar has depreciated, look no further than the price of gold. In 1982, an ounce was less than $500. Now it has breached $1,800. Surging gold price also indicates that people are losing faith in their economic, political and social system, and that they fear the immediate future. When gold shoots up, this house is coming down. Wander into any Vietnamese or Cambodian neighborhood, you’ll see an inordinate number of jewelry stores selling gold. People who have been traumatized by war and dictatorship don’t trust in banks or even money, but only gold to help them survive any societal upheaval.

So if the dollar is sinking, why accumulate it? First off, foreign governments must have dollars to buy oil, since no country can sell petroleum for anything but the dollar. The only renegades to this rule are Iran and Venezuela. Accepting Chinese yuans for oil, they have constantly been threatened by Washington. If euros, yens, yuans or rubles were generally accepted for oil, the United States would quickly become irrelevant and no one would have to send us real products for our increasingly worthless paper.

This petro dollar arrangement is enforced by the U.S. military. As Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi have found out, America will rain bombs on your people’s heads if you try to escape from this racket. Gaddafi wanted to nationalize Libya’s oil fields. He also proposed a common currency for Africa. In their trade with each other, African countries could then be free from the tyranny of the dollar, but such insolence could not go unpunished. America will hold a gun to your head to make sure you go on biting its bucks.

Making money on interest, banks generate debt for you and me, and for the government itself. This system is buoyed up from us drowning, and to keep us spending beyond our means, it must make us delirious with wants. Hence, this nonstop seduction everywhere you look. Don’t think or reflect. Lust. In 1982, there was only one television in McGlinchey’s. Now, there are four. As music blares, the unceasing come-ons flicker above our heads. Buy this, buy that, screw me, or rather, make love to my mirage.

Traditional virtues such as prudence and self control have been jettisoned, to be replaced by an insatiable appetite that breeds frustration, boredom, numbness and violence. In 2009, five blocks from here, a flash mob attacked a 56-year-old man riding home from work. They beat him unconscious and stole his credit cards. One of the perpetrators then bought over $5,000 of Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani and other high-end merchandises. He had the loot delivered to his front door, so that’s how twenty-one-year-old Stephen Lyde was caught. Though poor and obviously inexperienced with a credit card, Lyde was lusting after all the finer things possessed by those at the very top, and just like many of them, he was willing to commit violence. Unlike white collar crooks, however, Lyde pounced on his victim directly. If America were to start yet another war, how many stockholders would rejoice?

Our banking system makes money out of nothing, lends us cash that it doesn’t even have, and with Washington as its protector and enforcer, ensures that what we own is worth less and less, while we must work more and more to make payment after unending payment, with compounding interest, penalties, fees and whatever else it feels like tagging on at the end. The Federal Reserve, then, is not an institution with “public purposes and private aspects,” but exactly the opposite. Like our federal government itself, it is a cartel with ruthless, private objectives hidden behind a public façade.

The Fed has private purposes and public aspects, and as long as this parasite controls our wallets and government, you can count on more wars, bankruptcies, foreclosures, increasingly severe inflation and looting frenzies of every kind.

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