CIO HEROES!!
Edward Snowden!
Edward Snowden is an American hero who has significantly raised public awareness about the United States' government's threat to global freedom by using extreme and illegal measures of surveillance.
Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Uniquely placed Nandan Nilekani, ‘CEO’ of Project UID. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta)
by Arundhati Roy
Re-posted from Outlook India
Rockefeller to Mandela, Vedanta to Anna Hazare…. How long can the cardinals of corporate gospel buy up our protests?
Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamont Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “Pay your respects to our new Ruler.”
Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I had read about this most expensive dwelling ever built, the twenty-seven floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the six hundred servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn—a soaring, 27-storey-high wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches; bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, Trickledown hadn’t worked.
But Gush-Up certainly has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2 billion, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the GDP.
The word on the street (and in the New York Times) is, or at least was, that after all that effort and gardening, the Ambanis don’t live in Antilla. No one knows for sure. People still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, Vaastu and Feng Shui. Maybe it’s all Karl Marx’s fault. (All that cussing.) Capitalism, he said, “has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, that it is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.
In India, the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF “reforms” middle class—the market—live side by side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 2,50,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than twenty rupees a day.
Mukesh Ambani is personally worth $20 billion. He holds a majority controlling share in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a company with a market capitalisation of $47 billion and global business interests that include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas, polyester fibre, Special Economic Zones, fresh food retail, high schools, life sciences research and stem cell storage services. RIL recently bought 95 per cent shares in Infotel, a TV consortium that controls 27 TV news and entertainment channels, including CNN-IBN, IBN Live, CNBC, IBN Lokmat, and ETV in almost every regional language. Infotel owns the only nationwide licence for 4G Broadband, a high-speed “information pipeline” which, if the technology works, could be the future of information exchange. Mr Ambani also owns a cricket team.
RIL is one of a handful of corporations that run India. Some of the others are the Tatas, Jindals, Vedanta, Mittals, Infosys, Essar and the other Reliance (ADAG), owned by Mukesh’s brother Anil. Their race for growth has spilled across Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their nets are cast wide; they are visible and invisible, over-ground as well as underground. The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80 countries. They are one of India’s oldest and largest private sector power companies. They own mines, gas fields, steel plants, telephone, cable TV and broadband networks, and run whole townships. They manufacture cars and trucks, own the Taj Hotel chain, Jaguar, Land Rover, Daewoo, Tetley Tea, a publishing company, a chain of bookstores, a major brand of iodised salt and the cosmetics giant Lakme. Their advertising tagline could easily be: You Can’t Live Without Us.
According to the rules of the Gush-Up Gospel, the more you have, the more you can have.
The era of the Privatisation of Everything has made the Indian economy one of the fastest growing in the world. However, like any good old-fashioned colony, one of its main exports is its minerals. India’s new mega-corporations—Tatas, Jindals, Essar, Reliance, Sterlite—are those who have managed to muscle their way to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. It’s a dream come true for businessmen—to be able to sell what they don’t have to buy.
Read more here
Posted in art, AUSTERITY, CAPITALISM, COLONIALISM, CONSUMERISM, DEMOCRACY, ECONOMY, EMPIRE, EMPLOYMENT, ENVIRONMENT, imperialism, OCCUPY!, Women's Rights
Tagged Arundhati Roy, austerity, CAPITAL, capitalism, corporate capitalism, corporate money, health, India, permanent underclass, privatization
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OCCUPY THE SCREEN!
OCCUPY THE SCREEN!
ROXIE THEATER
March 29, 2012, 7pm
3117 16th Street
San Francisco, CA
Co-Organized by: Christopher Statton, Roxie Theater; Julie Gilgoff & Alex Tonisson, IFPTE Local 21; Megan Wilson, CAPITALISM IS OVER! If You Want It
Thursday, March 29th The Roxie Theater will host a film series and panel discussion to help bring historic context to social and economic protest movements, beginning with the Civil Rights’ Movement, and extending to other movements that have reclaimed public spaces to protest injustice. The film night will serve as a continuation of the discussion brought to the forefront by the Occupy Movement. Now that the encampments have been dispersed, what are communities around the Bay Area doing to challenge social and economic inequities?
A segment of Newreel’s documentary series of the Black Panther Party, What We Want, What We Belive will be featured with several short films, including AFT 2121: The Movie, Art Strikes Back, Yes Men’s Guide to High Level Pranking, and Occupy SF – Veterans Day: Amos Gregory. The screening will be followed with a panel discussion. Panelists include:
Kiilu Nyasha, San Francisco-based journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party.
Amos Gregory, Veteran Artist (US Navy, Submarine Force), Founder, Veterans’ Alley, San Francisco.
Reverend Paul Gaffney, Marin Interfaith Street Chaplaincy
Ramneek Saini, Community Services Director for the San Francisco Labor Council
The People’s Federal Credit Union (based out of Oakland) will also have a table set up to provide information on how to transfer your money from a big bank to a credit union.
The event will be FREE to the public with a suggested donation. 7pm
On What We Want, What We Believe:
“The invaluable Movement documentaries Newsreel produced furthered the work of the Black Panther Party and now provide the esdentail visual record of the Party’s early days. The collection offers an extraordinary compilation that includes historic behind the scenes details taken from a wide range of interviews and contemporary events as well as the classic Newsreel films.”
—Kathleen Cleaver, Communications Secretary, Black Panther Party, 1967–1971
Precapitalist socialism in the works of Burroughs
“Society is used in the service of capitalism,” says Baudrillard. Any number of deconstructions concerning the common ground between class and truth may be discovered. Therefore, Lyotard suggests the use of the dialectic paradigm of context to deconstruct hierarchy.
The main theme of Hubbard’s model of material narrative is a neocapitalist whole. Bataille’s analysis of dialectic Marxism suggests that language may be used to reinforce colonialist perceptions of class. In a sense, Derrida uses the term ‘Debordist situation’ to denote the role of the observer as writer.
Material narrative states that narrativity is capable of significance, given that Baudrillard’s critique of dialectic Marxism is invalid. However, Bataille promotes the use of material narrative to attack truth…………………..
The post you have been reading is totally meaningless. To read the rest of this essay, follow this link. The essay was generated automatically by the Postmodernism Generator using the Dada Engine. To generate a new essay, follow this link. It makes me laugh out loud and reminds me of reading The Archeology of Knowledge by Foucault.
Posted in CAPITALISM
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Occupy the War Machine
by Willie Osterweil, published on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 by Shareable.net, re-posted from Common Dreams
The differences are slight: one decade, one president, one letter out of four. “Change the q to an n, don’t use the phrase ‘WMD’ or ‘pre-emptive strike’”; each incoming Press Secretary should just pass out a style guide. It’s so absurd that the first reaction is a feeling of nauseau, surreality, perhaps madness. Nuclear weapons? State sponsored terrorism? Did we fall into a time warp? Do they really think we’ll buy any of this? It hasn’t even been long enough for the talking heads to turn over: it’s the same crooks delivering the same empty lines on CNN, in the New York Times, on the floor of the House. It’s 2003 all over again.
But Washington DC can be occupied, the plutocrats are served by employees who can strike, and the pundits screaming for Iranian blood are just people in a studio that can be taken over. Recognizing this is part of overcoming that politically impotent mode of expression that defined the left under President Bush: outrage. Outrage, as distinct from anger and rage, has always been a weak political position. Outrage is a reaction, the recognition and/or expression of offense or hurt and generally addresses itself to the people committing outrageous acts. Outrage reflects surprise and shock, which is why outrage can be so easily faked and manufactured to cover malicious intent. “I had no idea the corruption in my office had gotten this far! I’m outraged!” Outrage laughs angrily at Jon Stewart’s mugging, outrage signs a Moveon.org petition, outrage threatens to move to Canada. Outrage is individuated and alienated, it is an expression of the powerless.
The politics of outrage did have one tremendously hopeful moment. In February of 2003, as official, patriotic hatred for Iraq built to an orgiastic frenzy, millions of the outraged appeared on the streets of cities all around the globe, culminating in the largest single day of protest, at least in numbers, that the world has ever seen. But once war began, the movement, such as it was, collapsed. That such a tremendous explosion of popular angst failed to even register with the contemptuous and misanthropic executive would have come as no surprise to a movement with a better analysis of power, nor would it have been a death blow to a movement with a stronger creative impetus than outrage. Rather than manifesting our power, it turned out we were merely registering our offense, ‘voting with our feet’. We were asking the imperial machine not to go to war, and it didn’t even blink. Defeating outrage is as simple as ignoring it.
We are angry, certainly, but we are not shocked, not offended, not surprised. We’ve seen this show before, and while the 1% gathered in Washington may insist on repeating the past’s mistakes, we are not nearly so foolish. We can’t relive 2003, and no one outside of the DC bubble wants to. How do we respond to the hawks screaming for war? First, we could emphasize that the media teams, politicians, and commentators act in bad faith, that they lie without remorse or fear of consequence. We’ve seen this all before, the same lies from the same mouths, and, as W. said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, can’t get fooled again.” As the Obama administration pushes for yet more Middle East adventurism, it should be clear to all but the most stalwart denial artists that, at least in the realm of executive powers and warmaking, there is only an aesthetic difference between Democrat and Republican, between Obama and Bush. Neither voting nor voicing our outrage to our representatives will keep us out of war.
Posted in AUSTERITY, Big Oil, CAPITALISM, NEWS, OCCUPY the War Machine, OCCUPY!, PROTESTS
Tagged "another world is possible", capitalism, DEMOCRACY, OCCUPY, outrage, President Obama, The Corporate State, war, war machine, WARS
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What Kind of Country …
This American Life
March 2, 2012
All across the country right now, local and state governments are finding they can’t pay their bills. Schools are losing teachers, street lights are going dark, garbage is piling up in public parks, and cops are suddenly an optional expense.
This week we travel to Colorado Springs, to Trenton and to the office of Grover Norquist to ask: Is the kind of country we want? One where government gets smaller? Or should we all pay higher taxes, and keep government bigger?
In the town of Nowthen, MN, residents held meetings to debate whether a police force is worth the cost. And in Springfield, IL, the state police motorcycle division has been cut, leading to an increase in highway fatalities. Host Ira Glass talks about these and other examples of the battle between proponents of small government and those fighting to maintain public services. (4 minutes)
New Jersey governor Chris Christie has led some of the most sweeping budget cuts in the country. Producer Sarah Koenig reports from Trenton, where one third of the police force has been laid off, leading to dramatically increased crime. (14 1/2 minutes)
Perhaps the biggest proponent of smaller government in the United States is lobbyist and activistGrover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. He envisions a government reduced in size by half, and has compelled scores of conservative politicians take pledges to never raise taxes. Host Ira Glass speaks with Norquist about his strategies and beliefs, and learns which side seems to be winning. (14 1/2 minutes)
ACT THREE. DO YOU WANT A WAKE UP CALL?
After the recession hit, Colorado Springs was in rough shape. City services were being cut left and right. Then one man wrote a manifesto—a blueprint for how the city could solve its problems. Planet Money‘s Robert Smith tells the story. Robert is a member of the Planet Money team. (27 minutes)
We Are The 99% at The Roxie Theater
Posted in art, ARTISTS/ACTIONS, OCCUPY ALL STREETS!, OCCUPY SF, OCCUPY!, SOLUTIONS, WE ARE THE 99%
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Woman Power – Songs for International Women’s Day by Yoko Ono
Posted in ARTISTS/ACTIONS, SOLUTIONS
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Dilemmas: Smaller Bonuses for the Rich 1% and Motel Room Homes for Those The Rich Have Screwed
COMPANION PIECE: How The Rich Are Living with Smaller Bonuses & How Those They’ve Screwed Over Are Barely Managing To Survive:
Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal (1% Bonus Withdrawal)
By Max Abelson
Bloomberg
Florida Homeless Students Increase (Barely Surviving)
By Christine Armario
Huffington Post
1% Bonus Withdrawal: Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.
“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,” Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.
Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”
Barely Surviving: Zach Montgomery’s dad plugs in the electric skillet and opens the cardboard box containing tonight’s dinner.
The liquid from the canned chicken sizzles as it hits the skillet.
Zach, a 17-year-old high school student in Clermont, Florida, a bucolic town of rolling hills and palm trees outside Orlando, is used to dinners like this now. It’s been six months since his family moved into The Palace motel. Six months since he had a freezer large enough to hold ice cream or a quiet place to do homework.
Zach says he worries, about everything. Getting to school is tough. When his dad’s paycheck dries up a few days early, there isn’t money for gas. Sometimes, his mom says, he just doesn’t want to go. Zach worries about their safety. Police arrested four people running a mobile meth lab near the motel the week before. There are sights and smells Zach had never come across before he lived here. At night, when the television is off, they hear things that scare them.
His father, Ronald Montgomery, tall and spirited, sneaks in a chuckle, in spite or disbelief, as he talks about the last year. The lost house. His wife’s job. The illnesses. He pours in the rice and sprinkles the cheese powder on the chicken in the skillet as Zach looks on.
“It does make you feel like less of a person, or you’re a failure, because you’re not providing everything that you’ve been providing in the past,” he says.
“You’ve only got that door,” Zach says, looking at the chain lock and deadbolt separating their room and two beds from the outside world. “I’m thinking someone’s going to come in, just come in and do whatever they think they can do.”
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