March 4, 2013

Viewpoint: The Decline of Unions Is Your Problem Too

via Occupy Evansville ?@OccupyEville

http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/29/viewpoint-why-the-decline-of-unions-is-your-problem-too/#ixzz2JSrkADnn

First, the fact is that when unions are stronger the economy as a whole does better. Unions restore demand to an economy by raising wages for their members and putting more purchasing power to work, enabling more hiring. On the flip side, when labor is weak and capital unconstrained, corporations hoard, hiring slows, and inequality deepens. Thus we have today both record highs in corporate profits and record lows in wages.

Second, unions lift wages for non-union members too by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren’t a member your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.

Unfortunately, the relegation of organized labor to tiny minority status and the fact that the public sector is the last remaining stronghold for unions have led many Americans to see them as special interests seeking special privileges, often on the taxpayer’s dime. This thinking is as upside-down as our economy.

(More at the link.)

March 4, 2013

Lords of Disorder: How the Big Banks Are Designed to Prey off Our Economic Misery

via Occupy Evansville ?@OccupyEville

http://www.alternet.org/economy/lords-disorder-how-big-banks-are-designed-prey-our-economic-misery

Lords of Disorder

Just yesterday, in a rare burst of candor, Dimon said this to investors on a quarterly earnings call: “This bank is anti-fragile, we actually benefit from downturns.”


Arbitraging Failure

Dimon’s comment was another way of saying that his bank, and everything it represents, is The Shock Doctrine made manifest. The nation’s megabanks are arbitraging their own failures, and the economic crises that flow from those failures.

These institutions are designed to prey off economic misery. They suppress genuine market forces in order to thrive, and they couldn’t do it without our ongoing help. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are making it happen.

(More at the link.)

March 4, 2013

Bahaha! Bush's Wars!

Cross-posted from GD.

March 4, 2013

After two years, Amnesty explains why Bradley Manning has not been named a Prisoner of Conscience:

Michael ?@_cypherpunks_

After two years, @Amnesty explains why Bradley #Manning has not been named a Prisoner of Conscience: -
http://www.zcommunications.org/after-two-years-amnesty-explains-why-bradley-manning-has-not-been-named-a-prisoner-of-conscience-by-joe-emersberger# …

Over two years ago, in January of 2011, Amnesty USA told me they were “investigating” if Bradley Manning qualified as a “Prisoner of Conscience”. They told me they weren’t sure about his motivations and they’d have to look at his employment contract. I was then dismayed to see that the LA Times editorial board, hardly a revolutionary group, came out with a strong denunciation of Manning’s barbaric pre-trial detention before Amnesty had made any public statement in his defence.

Members of the Pussy Riot band in Russia were jailed on February 21, 2012. Less than 2 months later, Amnesty declared them to be "prisoners of conscience" (POC).

The blazing speed with which Amnesty declared them Prisoners of Conscience prompted me to renew my inquiries about Manning. Almost all my emails went unanswered except for one in which no explanation was given though it was “hoped” that somebody from their "research team" would soon answer me.

Today, I was finally told by an Amnesty USA employee (after she consulted with their “expert” on the case) that they have still not named Manning a Prisoner of Conscience (POC) but that Amnesty is “still investigating” if he qualifies. She added that Amnesty is not yet certain of two criteria that must be met

(Which are at the link.)

March 4, 2013

"Blockadia Rising" about the Keystone XL pipeline.

http://vimeo.com/59452444

(I haven't yet watched this for quality control but here it is for your viewing pleasure.)

March 3, 2013

Operation Wall Street : Proposal and Declaration / Anonymous strikes Wall Street CEOs, leaks info

http://anonrelations.net/opwallstreet-pr-1213/

This is a call to all Anonymous “members” and citizens of the world.

It is obvious that the DoJ and other government entities such as the SEC think that it is more important for them to regulate freedom of speech and information rather than to regulate the blatant organized crimes of the financial market. They persecute people like us, Occupy, and Arron Swartz instead of the Bankers and Wall Street executives and CEOs who have robbed Americans of their hard earned tax dollars.

They hand out billions upon billions of dollars to people who in no way need it yet our conditions for the poor, or even the middle class, have been continually diminishing. The middle class is now almost non existent thanks to the crimes of Goldman Sachs and other firms who have indulged in sinister and criminal practices.

Thousands of innocent and exploited people are being forced into homelessness while these same CEOs and executives make billions in so called profit. They make their fortunes on the shattered lives and broken dreams of people who were nothing more than slightly ignorant when trying to establish a comfortable life for themselves and their family.

It is no longer tolerable that these men and women get to live in luxury and lawlessness while innocent people are pushed into poverty and people who fight for freedom are prosecuted and demonized.

They demonize Occupy, they demonize Anonymous, they demonized Arron Swartz, they demonized Julian Asnage and Bradley Manning. They demonize the very people they force onto the street by calling them incompetent and lazy while calling themselves successful.

They must be stopped. With the recent pathetic assault on Anonymous’ methods by the Bank of America, with the growing despondence of the public. OPERATION WALL STREET, must be launched.

Although the attack on the NYSE was coordinated and acted on, more must be done now! It should be the duty of any Anonymous, any hacker, in solidarity with Occupy, to release the Dox on the CEOs & any and all Executives of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Wells Fargo, Chase, Meryl Lynch, and any other guilty party. Their dox, any and all possible personal information on these people, must be released and made public and spread across the internet as much as possible. The people who have lost their homes and had their lives destroyed deserve to know who it was that did it.

We can no longer let these disgraceful human beings live in luxury and escape the consequences of their actions. People are angry and rightfully so. We are stuck more and more in a state which we can not get out of and which is not our fault. The guilty must pay. OPERATION WALL STREET HAS BEEN PROPOSED, LAID OUT, AND LAUNCHED. We promise not to hurt you once we release your information but we cannot hold the people you screwed over responsible for their actions once they know who you are and where you live. You are not free to escape the consequences of your actions, no one is.

We are Anonymous, We are Legion, We do not Forgive, We do not Forget.

Expect Us.

---

Anonymous strikes Wall Street CEOs, leaks personal information

http://www.examiner.com/article/anonymous-strikes-wall-street-ceos-leaks-personal-information

Declaring “the guilty must pay,” Anonymous has released 4.6 gigabytes of data detailing the personal information of Wall Street CEOs and other high level Wall Street executives.

Links to the data began appearing via Twitter on March 2. AnonymousIRC, a popular Twitter account associated with the international hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, tweeted the following:

4.6GB .xml files on CEOs and Directors [Compressed to 520mb zip] http://bit.ly/15VxSkA #Anonymous #OWS #OpWallStreet #BofA #Bloomberg

The leak is associated with Operation Wall Street, a new protest launched by Anonymous hacktivists against the US government, Wall Street and the financial services industry. The operation seeks justice for those “who have lost their homes and had their lives destroyed” by "the crimes of Goldman Sachs and other firms."

(A bit more at the link.)

March 3, 2013

Prof. Benkler: The case against WikiLeaks is an attack against all journalist-source relations

WikiLeaks ?@wikileaks

Prof. Benkler: The case against WikiLeaks is an attack against all journalist-source relations
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112554#
Retweeted by OMC


The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112554#

After 1,000 days in pretrial detention, Private Bradley Manning yesterday offered a modified guilty plea for passing classified materials to WikiLeaks. But his case is far from over—not for Manning, and not for the rest of the country. To understand what is still at stake, consider an exchange that took place in a military courtroom in Maryland in January.

The judge, Col. Denise Lind, asked the prosecutors a brief but revealing question: Would you have pressed the same charges if Manning had given the documents not to WikiLeaks but directly to the New York Times?

The prosecutor’s answer was simple: “Yes Ma'am.”

The question was crisp and meaningful, not courtroom banter. The answer, in turn, was dead serious. I should know. I was the expert witness whose prospective testimony they were debating. The judge will apparently allow my testimony, so if the prosecution decides to pursue the more serious charges to which Manning did not plead guilty, I will explain at trial why someone in Manning's shoes in 2010 would have thought of WikiLeaks as a small, hard-hitting, new media journalism outfit—a journalistic “Little Engine that Could” that, for purposes of press freedom, was no different from the New York Times. The prosecutor's “Yes Ma'am,” essentially conceded that core point of my testimony in order to keep it out of the trial. That's not a concession any lawyer makes lightly.

(More at the link.)

March 3, 2013

Bahaha! Bush's wars!

March 3, 2013

Report: Immigration tops federal law enforcement spending

http://www.mycuentame.org/report_immigration_tops_federal_law_enforcement_spending

The United States government spent more money on immigration enforcement in fiscal year 2012 than it did on other federal law enforcement agencies combined, says a new report that details enforcement programs and spending.

Over a quarter century, spending on immigration enforcement has added up to nearly $187 billion. That's closer to $219 billion in 2012 dollars. The federal data is included in a new report titled "Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery." One of its authors is Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency that preceded Homeland Security. She and others produced the report for an independent think tank, the Migration Policy Institute.

The report indicates that during the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, the Obama administration's spending on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (which oversees the U.S. Border Patrol) and the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program hit $17.9 billion. This exceeded combined expenditures of $14.4 billion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

(More at the link.)

March 3, 2013

Of Sequester, Squander, and How Congress Sold Out the People

Occupy Wall Street ?@OccupyWallStNYC

Of #Sequester, Squander, and How Congress Sold Out the People
http://www.occupy.com/article/sequester-squander-and-how-congress-sold-out-people
… via @Occupy @uncutcg

Likewise in Washington, there’s plenty of money to avoid the $85 billion in sequester cuts that will be coming in March. Some of the worst cuts will be to programs like the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program, early childhood education, and federal funding for immunizations and vaccinations for children.

Congress would like to have us believe that there’s no money to pay for those programs, even though the Senate unanimously approved a $700 billion military budget in December on a 98-0 vote. And in the last ten years, we’ve spent almost $800 billion on “homeland security,” but there’s no help for hungry families who will be losing food assistance thanks to the sequester.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has cost us approximately $400 billion to date, and was recently grounded indefinitely due to faulty construction. If it becomes operational, the program would have a whopping $1 trillion budget. Even John McCain has called the program a“scandal and a tragedy.”

But for some reason, we can’t find the money to keep federal meat inspectors employed, who will lose their jobs after the sequester cuts take hold in March. And even though “Too Big to Fail” banks are still getting their $83 billion annual subsidy, there’s somehow not enough money to keep federal air traffic controllers employed when the FAA is forced to absorb $600 million in cuts from the sequester.

(More at the link. Cross-posted from Occupy Underground.)