Talk:Represent The People

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Additional Research Notes; Follow-Up

Links and notes (potentially) related to main article. Figure out where to insert later. Might fold into main article or jump to separate article.

The hope is for the main article's underlying theme to eventually lead into a discussion of strategies and tactics people can use to

- recognize the benefits of organizing at the community level
- refashion local and regional economies to directly benefit the long-term interests of the people who live there (as opposed to, for instance, a transnational entity with no interest in the community beyond the "value" it is motivated to extract)
- build healthy communities while warding off any kind of Balkanization (self-imposed or imposed by other means)
- understand the reasons why "business as usual" (ie: the globalized neoliberal economic policies imposed by the "developed world's" primary institutions and planners) is collapsing, and how people at the community level might respond

Actions / Events -- Local, National, International

#OccupyWallStreet

Ongoing: Kill Wall Street

Join your host Robert Foster and his guests, Terrence Moonseed and General Baxter, as they conduct an in-depth rap analysis into the future, and humanity's place in it.

Upcoming

The Coming Insurrection

Past Events

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
September 17th 2011 -- Is America Ripe for a Tahrir Moment?

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700 Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge as Occupy Wall Street Enters Third Week Protests Grows Nationwide
Occupy Portland!
The revolution is here.
The revolution is now.
The revolution is being wikified.
Occupy Portland | Occupy Portland
Occupy Portland is a nonviolent movement for accountability in the United States government. At 12PM on October 6th, 2011. We will assemble at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, 1020 Southwest Naito Parkway in Portland, Oregon.
OCCUPY TOGETHER
OCCUPY TOGETHER is a hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.
OCTOBER 2011
"Join us in Freedom Plaza starting October 6th (2011)!"
October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.
A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:
The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people.
—- Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
- More than 1,000 protesters wanted to create an ‘American Tahrir Square’
- But police put Wall Street under lockdown after reading plans on Twitter
- Protests were fraction of the size organisers Adbusters had hoped for
Updated, 5:22 p.m. | 19 September 2011 | In a continuation of the demonstrations that began on Saturday,[1] nearly 200 protesters marched along Wall Street and other parts of the financial district Monday morning, brandishing American flags and signs denouncing the economic system. At least six of them were arrested.

Occupy Portland - Events#Portland to Vancouver March for Good Jobs, No Cuts

869 cities – 71 countries

On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares.

From America to Asia, from Africa to Europe, people are rising up to claim their rights and demand a true democracy. Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest.

The ruling powers work for the benefit of just a few, ignoring the will of the vast majority and the human and environmental price we all have to pay. This intolerable situation must end.

United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future. We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us.

On October 15th, we will meet on the streets to initiate the global change we want. We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.

It’s time for us to unite. It’s time for them to listen.

People of the world, rise up on October 15th!

“As governments of varied ideological persuasions crack down ever more harshly against dissent, challenges to their authority or lack of accountability and basic freedoms of expression and association, it is clear that civil society needs to come together urgently, across thematic and regional divides, to identify and implement strategies to protect the space and role of civil society globally.”
-- Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General

News & Links: Actions; Uprisings

  • Could world social unrest hit America's streets?: Historian Rick Perlstein says union protests in Wisconsin show the birth of a movement. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has suggested the unrest that rocked the streets of Cairo and Madrid this year could spread to the US.

Militarism; War Profiteering

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. War is not the answer. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Beyond Vietnam: A Call to Conscience | Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There have been so many wars, practically every year throughout the world for the last five thousand years and more. War, that means, every year killing, killing, killing; how many millions have suffered, shed tears, felt the flame of loneliness, and yet we do not apparently use our intelligence to stop this cruelty, this bestiality of violence...

J. Krishnamurti Ojai 5th Public Talk 15th May 1982 | Jiddu Krishnamurti
Veteran New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges has covered conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel. Tune in for this thought-provoking lecture based on his best selling book that argues life is lived most intensely in times of war, often with tragic consequences.
Ray McGovern introduces a short documentary deconstructing events revealed by WikiLeaks. Original version broadcast by German television program Panorama.

9/11

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9/11 Not an "Intelligence Failure" Ray McGovern and Jason Leopold:
The intelligence agencies had the information, the question is why didn't they use it.
Osama's final resting place.

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Intelligence on Bin Laden, 9/11 Targets Withheld From Congress' Probe
Jeffrey Kaye: Senior military commanders prior to 9/11 blocked intelligence
that located Bin Laden and predicted WTC and Pentagon were likely targets.
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the mass of invoices, receipts, contracts and email correspondence – submitted as evidence to a court in upstate New York – provides a unique glimpse into a world in which the "war on terror" became just another charter opportunity for American businesses.
"Ten years have passed, and there is still much to grieve about September 11, 2001." In the weeks and years that followed 9/11, we lost the chance for a politics built around the kind of social solidarity embodied by those law enforcement officers and firefighters who responded first to the attacks and expressed by the society so moved by their sacrifice.
Ten years after 9/11, the “entire litany of vicious crimes against humanity, fitting for horrid, inhuman terrorist groups or Third World mongrels, now belongs to America”.
TEN YEARS AGO America and the world were shocked by the most horrific foreign attack on U.S. soil in our history. In the decade since we have learned a great deal about ourselves, about how to handle the terrorist threat and about what works and doesn’t work in combating terrorism.
Perhaps it was inevitable in America’s self-absorbed culture that the tragedy of 9/11 would be politicized and counter-politicized, forged into a weapon by ideological forces to wield against their enemies in the never-ending “culture wars.”
The terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, sent the United States into a 10-year downward spiral, not because of the attacks themselves but because of disastrous political judgments that followed.
What if the United States had responded with demands for justice, not wars of conquest.
Senior Pentagon officials scrubbed key details about a top-secret military intelligence unit's efforts in tracking Osama bin Laden and suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from official reports they prepared for a Congressional committee probing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, new documents obtained by Truthout reveal.
The "intelligence failures" leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an issue the media - and lawmakers - put to bed years ago, despite the fact that new information continues to trickle out, undercutting the integrity of the official investigations into who knew what and when.
Part One: Saudi link to 9/11 hijackers found in Sarasota but not revealed by FBI
Part Two: Sen. Bob Graham wanted to publish results of Saudi investigation, Bush ordered it redacted

Pentagon

The military-industrial complex is pulling out all the stops to ensure that not one dime of its vast federal largess is taken away even as the nation faces nearly $15 trillion in debt. Defense contractors, Representatives and Senators, and current and former Defense Secretaries are working together to thwart actual and potential cuts in defense spending resulting from the August debt ceiling deal.
We've spent nearly $8 trillion on counterterrorism since 9/11. It's time to assess the results.
New projects, including Kathryn Bigelow's bin Laden film, show rising pressure on filmmakers to please the military.
Despite budget woes, the military is preparing for a conflict with our biggest rival -- and we should be worried.
China just launched a refitted Ukrainian aircraft carrier from the 1990s on its first test run -- and that’s what the only projected "great power" enemy of the U.S. has to offer for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier task forces to cruise the seven seas and plans to keep that many through 2045. Like so much else, when it comes to the American military, all comparisons are ludicrous. In any normal sense, the United States stands alone in military terms. Its expenditures make up almost 50% of global military spending; it dominates the global arms market; and it has countless more bases, pilotless drones, military bands, and almost anything else military you’d care to mention than does any other power.
As President Obama gives his speech on how important it is for the government and the country to produce more jobs, and as the budget noose starts to tighten on all government programs, including the Department of Defense (DoD) this time, the DoD will flood the Congress with charts and statistics on how cutting the DoD will also cut important defense manufacturing jobs across the US.
While often deemed synonymous with "neoconservative" (a label given to defectors from the Left who came to embrace this approach in light of the Cold War) foreign policy, emphasis on strong national defense, active promotion of democracy around the globe, and attempts at "nation building" have become the reality of America's role in the world today.
According to new study released by the US Air Force, an overwhelming number of the pilots that command unmanned robotic drones from operation centers in America are suffering from intense stress, even if they are on the other side of the world from where their attacks are being carried out. With the US continuing drone strikes despite opposition from allies overseas such as Pakistan, the toll that the task of commanding the controversial crafts could be having on its pilots could be detrimental to the Department of Defense, who insists on pushing through with the program even with the end result including droves of dead civilians since the missions began.

War On Drugs

Gary Webb's outstanding investigative report on the CIA's complicity with and contribution to the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon: “It is impossible to pass tons of drugs or cocaine to U.S. without some grade of complicity of some American authorities.”
Spokesman for Chihuahua state says US agencies don't want to end drug trade, a claim denied by other Mexican officials.

Middle East

Homeland Secure? The Rise of the Police & Surveillance State

“ The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. ”
 
New emails released by WikiLeaks indicate that TrapWire, a defense contractor owned and operated by ex-CIA operatives, sits at the heart of American intelligence. Everything from incidents on military base to calls to NYC's "See Something, Say Something" are routed through TrapWire.

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Jiddu Krishnamurti: Is There Security At All Psychologically?

One of the greatest difficulties lies in this constant struggle to reach, to understand, to acquire; for we are trained from childhood to acquire, to achieve... psychological security.... The mind wants to be completely certain - but there is no certainty. We may demand security in all our relationships, our attitudes, our activities - but actually there is no such thing as being secure; ... we may be thinking in terms of this urge to be psychologically secure ... and that dominates all our attitudes, all our activities, all our thinking, and hence that becomes a block. So before we can begin to understand something much more fundamental, we have to be clear about this matter of security. Psychologically, is there such a thing as "to be secure"?

Thought has created all the various forms of illusion - nationalities, class, different gods, different beliefs, different dogmas, different rituals and the extraordinary religious superstitions that pervade the world - and in them it has sought security. And one does not see the danger of this security, of this illusion. When one sees the danger - not as an idea but as an actual fact - that seeing is intelligence, the supreme form of absolute security. So there is absolute security: it is to see the truth in the false.[2]
Across the United States, abusive and unlawful protest regulation and policing practices have been and continue to be alarmingly evident. This 195 page report follows a review of thousands of news reports and hundreds of hours of video, extensive firsthand observation, and detailed witness interviews.

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With Occupy protesters gearing up for a spring resurgence, Salisbury spells out just what activists will be up against -- think unmanned drones, tanks, and super-sophisticated surveillance systems from New York City to Scottsbluff, Nebraska -- in the months ahead.
At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere. There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization — a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.
Kolin, a political science professor at Hilbert College in Buffalo, New York, has done a masterful job of tracing the origins of the "political repression of mass-based movements" and the rise of the "police state" in his exhaustively researched book, State Power and Democracy: Before and During The Presidency of George W. Bush. All police states, "and Germany in the [1930s] is the classic example," develop by "crushing democracy."[3][4]
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower warned of the ‘disastrous rise’ of the military-industrial complex. His fears proved all too accurate. Now in the post-9/11 world, the threat goes even further: the military-industrial complex is evolving into the military-intelligence complex. It is a world, I fear, that is propelling us into a dystopian surveillance nightmare.
Ten years after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, the fundamental promises of American democracy are hanging by a thin thread. Promoted by a culture of war and fear, the US government has steadily chipped away at those legal protections that enabled 'we the people' to rule ourselves. "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the Homeland"[5] charts the course of this shift, exposing the rapid advent of a technologically advanced surveillance state in the shadows of the Twin Towers.
"Top Secret America" is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked - with the result an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it. It is, as Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have found, ubiquitous, often inefficient and mostly invisible to the people it is meant to protect and who fund it.
Border security constitutes the single largest line item in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget. Nonetheless, DHS has failed to develop a border security strategy that complements US domestic and national security objectives.
The Department Of Homeland Security is the very epitome of unnecessary bureaucracy. Its formation was predicated on the existence of terrorist threats, many of which the U.S. government and orbiting alphabet agencies either created through acts of war, or fabricated out of thin air. Its policies of centralization were sold to the public as necessary to prevent systemic “miscommunications” that never actually took place. Throughout our history, it has been a rare occasion indeed when an attack falls upon American infrastructure or interests that was not influenced, directly or indirectly, by the actions of agencies which were supposedly employed to prevent such events from ever occurring. Whether through ‘blowback’, or through ‘false flag’, frankly, most of the harm that comes to our nation is perpetrated by the guiding hand of our inexorably corrupt government.

Environment; Climate Change

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Recordings from The New Emergency Conference: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World.
The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out? Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn’t exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear.
"Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles."
--Jim Hansen
The fight against oil and gas giants is heating up in the U.S., with new waves of protest and civil disobedience springing up across the country.
A new era of depletion, collapse and austerity
Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade--like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over.

Nuclear Meltdowns

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Children of Chernobyl
1. Part ONE
Instead of honoring its victims at this time Chernobyl is referenced to minimize the impact of Fukuchima. Supposedly only 35 people died. The World Health Organization and the IAEA, whose mission is to promote nuclear power, claim that "there is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure from Chernobyl." That the reality on the ground is very different comes to life in a book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.
2. Part TWO
The extensive section on health effects in this book offers a whole new view of the consequences of radiation induced disease. Yes, there are cancers to specific organs, many thyroid cancers caused by Iodine 131 and 129 but there are also diseases that affect body systems such as the whole endocrine system, not just the thyroid, or the immune system, the respiratory and the reproductive systems. - Also a brief explanation of "half life" "hot spots" and why background radiation is different from radiation from nuclear processes.
3. Part THREE
This program presents the consequences of the Chernobyl explosion on the environment. How has the radiation affected - and continues to affect air, water, the soil, plants and animals. How does radiation move, disperse, bio-accumulate and enter the food chain. Specific examples are from studies on rivers and lakes, wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, fungi, bacteria, viruses, studies that show that they were all affected, in varying degrees, but without exception.
4. Part FOUR
This last episode presents important information on the plight of the children of Chernobyl who - to this day - need vacations in uncontaminated areas to detoxify their bodies from some of the embedded radioactive substances that they absorb in every day life, substances such as cesium, cobalt, thorium, plutonium etc. Also explained is the danger of contaminated food, and how to set up ongoing projects, under control of local communities, to deal with the persisting radiation and find methods to measure the burden of internal radiation.
Google Voice / Google Text Fun

Misrouted call to unsuspecting Google Voice mailbox:

+1425xxxxxxx Add - Bothell, WA
8/23/11 10:44 AM 65 minutes ago
And I'm calling For the Mario and ready. Actually the Auto Club beat Speedway, I'm interested in getting some driving time for my brother, around October 15th. Time Frame in, fontana, california possible. My mobile number is (425) xxx-xxxx. And it is. I'm calling from Seattle, Washington. Thank you. No. 00:35
Call Text more? Transcript useful?

Texted reply to caller, and caller's response:

Me to +1425xxxxxxx Add - Bothell, WA
8/23/11 11:47 AM 2 minutes ago
Me: Hello! Thank you for your inquiry about driving time. Due to the unfolding economic collapse driven by peak oil we ask folks to refrain from driving. -xoxo 11:41 AM
+1425xxxxxxx: Ok thanks, all the best 11:47 AM
Call Text more?

Relocalization; Degrowth; Peak Oil; Economic Collapse

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What will a post collapse society look like?
Conventional economic theory flies in the face of ecological reality. How can a global economy premised on perpetual growth survive in a closed system, which is our planet earth? On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Richard Heinberg, author of a new book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, which proposes a startling diagnosis: the expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits which include resource depletion, environmental impacts of unfettered industrial growth and crushing levels of debt. We discuss what policymakers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth’s budget of energy and resources and how we can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than continuing to pursue the now-unattainable prize of ever-expanding GDP.
Media Education Foundation - Michael Klare: The primary US objective in the region is to support authoritarian regimes that guarantee the flow of oil.

Arithmetic, Population, and Energy

Eight-part video series uses simple math to demonstrate why unfolding catastrophes involving global finance, peak oil, climate change and severe natural resource depletion are underway now.

Collapse Network

Gross Destructive Product
“Work Will Set You Free”
Collapse Network's so-called "Compass Points" are one of the "core documents" from Michael Ruppert's Collapse Network." The compass points include (in directional order):
NORTH – A New, Sustainable Human Paradigm Must Be Rooted In Local, Chemical-Free Food Production, Extended Family And Community
SOUTH – Until The Way Money Works Changes, Our Species Is Trapped In An Infinite-Growth Paradigm Which Threatens All Life
EAST – Infinite Growth On A Finite Planet Is Not Possible
WEST – Human Population Will Inevitably Reduce By Billions Of People Amidst Great Suffering As The Sun Sets On Industrial Civilization
The collapse prep checklist includes
  1. Acquire at least three month’s worth of food for your household and encourage everyone close to you to do the same.
  2. Secure an emergency water supply.
  3. Acquire Potassium Iodide for radioactive fallout protection.
  4. Get in shape.
  5. Stockpile at least ten gallons of fuel.
  6. Keep a small store of physical cash but trade in most of your dollars for tangible goods and/or precious metals.
  7. Conduct yourself with confidence.
  8. Sell off luxuries and acquire essentials.
  9. Put together a bailout kit and make contingency plans.
  10. Share your plans with friends, family, and trustworthy neighbors.
"Unless you change how money works, you change nothing. We live in an infinite growth economy, in other words -- a ponzi scheme. Infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible. Those species who cannot get out of their paradigm are doomed to go extinct. Can we disengage from our paradigm?"

Sustainability & Collapse Mitigation With Cuban Characteristics

Only Cuba provides a decent standard of living for its people without consuming more than its fair share of (global) resources.

Dmitry Orlov & Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union

Dmitry Orlov, engineer and author, warns that the US's reliance on diminishing fuel supplies might be sending it down the same path the Soviet Union took before it collapsed. Orlov, who was an eyewitness to the collapse of the Soviet Union, asserts that run-away debt and national bankruptcy will lead the US to its demise, just as it did for Moscow. "As oil becomes more expensive and scarcer, the US will no longer be able to finance its importation and the economy will hit a wall. Sixty percent of all of our transportation fuels are imported—a lot of that is on credit. A large chunk of the trade deficit is actually in transportation fuels. When those stop arriving because of our inability to borrow more money, then the economy is at a standstill."
The Twilight of the Antipodes and the Cultural Flip (Power point presentation from talk.)
Comment from viewer: "Very good synthesis, and honest, radical views. Think for a second about a future where you have to unlearn consumerism, bike around more and recycle your plastic bottles. Then ponder a future where the only reliable forms of transportation available are boats, horses and your feet! :D That's what I mean by an honest view on the current collapse. We're very far from sustainabilty, and it's time we get a clear picture. No matter how ridiculously scary."
Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse:The Soviet Example and American Prospects, explored the question “What is it that we are looking at here, and what can we do about it?” He believes that there is not much hope for a global financial system and economy, nor should there be given the huge problems it is causing with the environment. If this is the case, then what can people do, in terms of coping with financial collapse, creating community resilience, and re-skilling for the new, local, self-reliant, highly manual age that is coming?
Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation (Orlov's notes and power point slides.)

Community

Inherent within the challenges of peak oil and climate change is an extraordinary opportunity to reinvent, rethink, and rebuild the world around us.
- Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook.
Transition PDX: Recovery Zone on 08/24/11
- Program: Recovery Zone | Air date: Wed, 08/24/2011 - 11:00am - 11:30am
- Short Description: Transition PDX working for sustainability and ecological resilience.
We live in an oil-dependent world, and became this dependent in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. The Transition Movement began in 2005 in Totnes in the UK with a vote by the town council to work toward energy independence and a sustainable future. The idea spread quickly. There are now over 300 communities recognized as official Transition Towns in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Italy and Chile.[6] Host Stephanie Potter will be speaking with David Johnson and Jim Newcomer who are with the Transition PDX here in Portland, Oregon. Johnson is also on the Board of Transition US[7] and serves as a Transition Trainer. Transition PDX is loosely organized into a network of groups comprised of people coming together to overcome the challenges of peak oil, economic stagnation and the climate crisis, and to explore how the transition model can be applied in the Portland area to create thriving neighborhoods.
City Repair is an organized group action that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live.

The Tyranny of the CorpoReich

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Authors@Google: David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5,000 Years
- Bill Moyers: Politics Today is Money Laundering (Part One)
- Bill Moyers: Politics Today is Money Laundering (Part Two)
“Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.”
(The Powell Memo) laid out a plan to take control off all the institutions that determine the direction of the United States, not just the government but the media and academia as well. Forty years later we can see that this plan has been followed, pro-business think tanks have been developed along with pro-corporate publications, colleges and universities have been greatly influenced by corporate funding and the power of corporations to influence elections has dramatically increased thanks to a series of court and legislative decisions. Today, concentrated corporate power has a grip on all of these institutions and sets the direction for U.S. policy through government and other institutions.
Stocks have become the playthings of hedge funds, warping corporate motivation and eroding stock market returns. The biggest ill has been to align top executives pay with performance, usually measured by the stock price. This has proven to be "a disaster." Managers have become share price obsessed. By focusing on short-term stock moves, prices managers are eroding the long-term value of their franchises. Economists have promulgated the idea of shareholder über alles, based on a misreading of corporate law. In 1970, Milton Friedman wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine that contended "the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." Two business professors, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, expanded on the idea in their paper "The Theory of the Firm," arguing that the only obligation corporations had was to increase profits for their owners, the shareholders.
Many people are spending a lot of their time volunteering to stop specific environmental threats, to address a specific labor issue, or to stop various other corporate abuses to our communities. The number of problems seems endless. Isn't there a faster way to save the world? This page is devoted to those who are interested in getting to the root of society's problems.

Prison Industrial Complex

Prison Labor as the Past -- and Future -- of American “Free-Market” Capitalism
"This is an industry that needs misery, long sentences, rounded-up undocumented immigrants and increasing crime to flourish."

Big Pharma

Big Pharma pushes American diplomats to pressure host countries -- the Philippines, Turkey, and India, for example -- to help them make more money, often by limiting the country from making its own generic version of the drugs and extending the length of patents so the companies can charge a premium price for longer.
Prometheus gave man fire, thankfully he didn’t charge every time man lit a match. Prometheus Labs in contrast wants to charge patients for a rule that says when to increase or decrease a drug in response to a blood test.

Industrial Food

The Future of Food is a 2004 American documentary film which makes an in-depth investigation into unlabelled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have made their way onto grocery stores in the United States for the past decade. In addition to the US there is a focus on Canada and Mexico.
Food, Inc. is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner.[8] The film examines corporate farming in the United States, concluding that agribusiness produces food that is unhealthy in a way that is environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and employees.
  • Food Inc. (Full-length documentary -- with Spanish subtitles -- available on Vimeo as of 11:09, 22 July 2012 (PDT).)
Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003 during which he eats only McDonald's food. The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effects on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.
The World According to Monsanto is a 2008 documentary film directed by Marie-Monique Robin. Originally released in French as Le monde selon Monsanto, the film is based on Robin's three-year long investigation into the US agricultural giant Monsanto corporation's practices around the world.[9] The World According to Monsanto is also a book written by Marie-Monique Robin winner of the Rachel Carson Prize (a Norwegian prize for female environmentalists), [10] the book was translated to many languages.
The World According to Monsanto is a documentary first aired on French television (ARTE – French-German cultural TV channel). It was produced by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin. It's unlikely you'll see this documentary on American television. The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.

Economics

  • Professor Richard D. Wolff - Class Warfare (Alternative Radio Podcast)
People dread taxes. The tax code is a labyrinth few citizens dare to enter save for the rich and powerful who hire lawyers and accountants to figure out ways to game the system. One corporation paid $26,000 a year to maintain a post office box in Bermuda as its legal headquarters. That little trick saved them $40 million in corporate taxes. Not bad. Taxes on the wealthy used to be high. During the Eisenhower years in the 1950′s, a fairly conservative period which saw tremendous economic growth, the tax rate for the haves was 91 percent. Today it’s a third of that, and few actually pay that much. In true Orwellian fashion, if you raise these issues you are accused of class warfare. There is class warfare all right. It’s been successfully waged by the affluent 1 percent against everybody else.
From Coastal Progressives -- "This is an excellent review of, and wide-ranging discussion about, our current economic situation. It's clear, comprehensive, enlightening (he even talks about Oregon, if you can imagine!), insightful and frank. He covers an incredibly complex field of information about history, culture, psychology, ethics, and economics easily and lucidly. It really needs to be seen by more people. The not so rhetorical questions he asks need to be more widely known."
From web site -- Watch as Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government "bailouts," stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis, in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis.
So, what are the protesters so upset about, really? Do they have legitimate gripes? To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes. And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will likely be only the beginning. The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high. In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Cliché, sure, but it's more true than at any time since the Gilded Age. While politicians gloat about our "recovery," our poor are getting poorer, our average wages are still falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low. But, yes, if you're in that top 1%, life in America is grand.

Finance

(Series produced by The Real News Network.)
Wall Street banks and the hedge fund Magnetar worked together to build mortgage-backed deals that the hedge fund also bet against. The more than $40 billion of deals helped fuel the crash of 2008.
Thomas Palley, the former Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Growth fellow at the New America Foundation and former assistant director of public policy at the AFL-CIO, makes the case that the 2008 financial crisis was a “crisis of bad ideas.”
A far-reaching new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis
“ A new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen (shows) that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths. The researchers note that achieving overall success was less important to the stock speculators than the sadistic drive "to damage their opponents." ”
The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out?

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Inside Job (2010) is a documentary film about the late-2000s financial crisis directed by Charles H. Ferguson. The film was screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May and won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Ferguson has described the film as being about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption."[11] In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis. Inside Job was well received by film critics who praised its pacing, research, and exposition of complex material.

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Should Africa Repay its 'Odious' Debts?

The Real News Network's Paul Jay interviews Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, authors of Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent.

Also see: Odious Debts -- News articles - Africa
In just this one peek we got at its operations, we learned that the Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, without Congressional input. The audacity and absurdity of it all is mind boggling. It seems that the average person doesn’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, let alone 12.3 trillion. You might as well just say 12.3 gazillion, because people don’t grasp a number that large, nor do they understand what would be possible if that money was used in other ways. Can you imagine what we could do to restructure society with $12.3 trillion? People also can’t grasp the colossal crime committed because they keep hearing the word “loans.” People think of the loans they get. You borrow money, you pay it back with interest, no big deal. That’s not what happened here. The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral, demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some cases.[12] They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and speculators crashed the system.
Rob Johnson: Financial institutions planning to use crisis to privatize and monopolize.
EDITOR NOTES: This topic is crucial for people to understand. The same forces whose antics brought the global economy to its knees while accumulating unimaginable "paper" wealth are scooping up every tangible asset they can get their hands on while prices for those assets are cheap and before their currency becomes worthless.
- Wall Street lobbyists trying to slow down trading regulations and defund Commission
- Massive spikes in price of food, oil, natural gas and silver cannot be the result of supply and demand
- For regulations to be effective, there has to be political will and proper resources
- Regulator gets "around 100 visits from finance reps for every one from community advocates"
Iceland was one of the hardest hit nations in the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 economic meltdown. Asked by their own government to pay Britain and Holland for bailing out their Icesave-exposed banks, the people overwhelmingly said "no." Do the actions of the Icelandic people present an example for the rest of the world as we see the global economy teetering on the edge of collapse?
The "money note" comes at the end of the discussion:
Q: Do we need Goldman Sachs? What do they contribute to the economy? Is there any need for any of these institutions?
A: These are very large institutions, very profitable institutions with essentially zero social value. If they disappeared overnight, I think the world would be a better rather than a worse place.
SHORT STORY: Pick something of value, make bets on the future value of "something", add contract & you have a derivative. Banks make massive profits on derivatives, and when the bubble bursts chances are the tax payer will end up with the bill. This visualizes the total coverage for derivatives (notional). Similar to insurance company's total coverage for all cars.
How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape.
Without accountability, says former watchdog, the 'unending parade of megabanks scandals will inevitably continue'
Former Tarp Inspector General, Neil Barofsky discusses his new book Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. Topics include the widespread fraud in the TARP program, how the HAMP program was designed to provide a "soft landing" for banks the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street and getting a "Bullet or Bribe" Colombian Drug Cartel Style offer from the former head of TARP, Herb Allison.

Propaganda

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CIA's "Facebook" Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs
Psywar Film Reveals The Hidden Battle for Your Mind: Psywar explores corporate and government use of propaganda and public relations to manipulate American people. The movie shows how the U.S. government staged events to manipulate public opinion about the Iraq war, like the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, the supposedly spontaneous mob that pulled over the larger-than-life statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It also discusses the Pentagon pundit scandal, and the hidden activities of the Rendon Group, a PR firm specializing in spinning war. The film exposes government and corporate activities to blur the lines between real news and fake news, as well as the development over time of public relations misinformation campaigns, strategic corporate campaigns to generate goodwill and the perception of good works, the use of staged photo-ops, and other manipulative PR tools that have turned the land of the free and the home of the brave into a place where citizens are now manipulated with great efficiency, and on a massive scale.[13]
Summary: The people of the US have been subjected to the most costly, unparalleled, 3/4 century propaganda effort by corporations in order to expand corporate rights, limit democracy and destroy the unions. This two part radio broadcast explores the history From WWI to Reagan.
Credits: Producer: Maria Gilardin tuc@tucradio.org
- "...Americans are the most propagandized people of any nation."
- "...The success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century."
- "[The common man's] most intimate conceptions of himself, of his needs, and indeed of the very nature of human nature, have been subject to skilled manipulation and construction in the interests of corporate efficiency and profit."
Carey was a professor of psychology and industrial relations at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
From Publisher: This compelling book examines the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses and its export to and adoption by other western democracies, chiefly the United Kingdom and Australia.
Praise:
"A uniquely important work on the 'ideal of a propaganda-managed democracy."
--Noam Chomsky
"Illuminates how big business propaganda, waged by PR experts, subverts democracy and ensures corporate dominance."
--John Stauber, coauthor of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
"A unique study of the growth and development of corporate propaganda in western democracies. . . . Timely, and useful for anyone concerned about the influence of methods of mass persuasion in undermining democracy."
--Elaine Bernard, Harvard University Trade Union Program
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is an analysis of the news media as business. The title derives from the phrase “the manufacture of consent” that essayist–editor Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) employed in the book Public Opinion (1922).
Noam Chomsky's talk called "Controlling the Public Mind", taped March 1 1996, sponsored by the B.C. Federation of Labour and the Vancouver and District Labour Council. Over 1000 people came to hear Dr. Chomsky at the Hotel Vancouver on a cold rainy Sunday night. His flight from Boston was delayed and he didn't arrive till after 11 pm, for an event scheduled to begin at 7 pm. Nevertheless the room was full when he began speaking. Nearly everyone had waited over 4 hours to hear him.
“The Century of the Self”, reveals the intricacies of psycho-manipulative social engineering through propaganda. Propaganda is a type of communication which is aimed at influencing a community toward a cause. Media utilizes propaganda by constantly dispersing certain information over a wide spectrum of mainstream media outlets (e.g.:ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News) or more recently internet social networks (e.g:Facebook and Twitter) to sequester the desired attitudes from it.
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.

Money in Politics

Despite unprecedented spending at all levels of elections this cycle, the Washington Post reports that “three-quarters of Americans have either heard 'a little' (36 percent) or 'nothing at all' (39 percent) about 'increased spending in this year’s presidential election by outside groups not associated with the candidates or campaigns.'"
- 94% of all individual donations to super-PACs in the 2012 cycle came from just 1,082 people.
- 57% of all individual super-PAC donations came from just 47 people, each giving $1M or more.
- The top five dark-money nonprofit groups have spent $53 million on ads. They disclosed just $420,920--or 0.79%.
- Five big outside-spending groups have accounted for over half of all outside spending in the 2012 cycle.

Narrative of a Failed State

Twilight is on the horizon for American culture. After spreading an ideology of endless economic growth around the world, the definition of modernity has been defined by the United States. American values are now written into the cultural textbook for nations across the globe. Now that America is failing, what does it feel like to look back and what did we achieve? Was the collapse written in the opening chapters? What if our technological legacy comes with a terrible dark side?

Social Control Through Fear & Hate

From Report: As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the Islamophobia network will be working overtime. The anniversary could be manipulated to ratchet up the nonexistent threat of Sharia and warn of apocalyptic dangers stemming from Muslims living in America.[14]
Selected Quotes From Report
From Page 2: A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.
Full Report: Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America
Related Article: New report maps the roots of Islamophobia: A new report traces the flow -- and funding -- of anti-Muslim ideas >> In a 140-page report released Friday, researchers at the Center for American Progress have traced the origins of rising Islamophobia in the United States to what they call a "small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing."

References

  1. ↑ Wall Street Protest Begins, With Demonstrators Blocked
  2. ↑ Jiddu Krishnamurti on Security
  3. ↑ State Power and Democracy
  4. ↑ State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush (Excerpt from book.)
    With the recent emergence of the nationwide “Occupy” movement in the United States, there is reason to hope that a mass-based progressive movement could develop to challenge the power of an American police state.
  5. ↑ Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland"
  6. ↑ Transition Initiatives Directory
  7. ↑ Transition United States: Bringing a new world to life.
  8. ↑ Severson, Kim. "Eat, Drink, Think, Change." The New York Times. June 3, 2009.
  9. ↑ The World According to Monsanto IMDb Page
  10. ↑ The World According to Monsanto
  11. ↑ "Charlie Rose Interviews Charles Ferguson on his documentary 'Inside Job'", February 25, 2011
  12. ↑ Usage of Federal Reserve Credit and Liquidity Facilities
    The Federal Reserve also provided credit to several systemically important financial institutions. These actions were taken to avoid the disorderly failure of these institutions and the potential catastrophic consequences for the U.S. financial system and economy. All extensions of credit were fully secured and are in the process of being fully repaid.
  13. ↑ Psywar Film Reveals The Hidden Battle for Your Mind
  14. ↑ Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America -- Conclusion
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