Nothing Is Final

NewScientist reveals what’s obvious to everyone

 

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

 

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.  -- New Scientist

 

]

Read the whole article

The Sheriff of Nottingham is not amused

 

 

OCTOBER 29 – #ROBINHOOD GLOBAL MARCH

This is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.

Eight years ago, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 15 million people in sixty countries marched together to stop President Bush from invading Iraq … a huge chunk of humanity lived for one day without dead time and glimpsed the power of a united people's movement. Now we have an opportunity to repeat that performance on an even larger scale.

On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let's the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let's send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

Take this idea to your local general assembly and join your comrades in the streets on October 29.

for the wild,

Culture Jammers HQ

Apparently the Wall Street Occupiers are also scholars of The Unanimous Declaration

 

 

The statement issued from Zuccotti Park by the general assembly at Occupy Wall Street

"As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members. That our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors. That a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people, and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

• We come to you at a time when corporations -- which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality -- run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here as is our right to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

• They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is, itself, a human right.

• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut worker's health care and pay.

• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility.

• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams, but look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

• They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

• They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives, or provide relief in order to protect investments that have

• already turned a substantial profit.

• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

• They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

• To the people of the world,

• We, the New York City general assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

• Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

• To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

• Join us and make your voices heard."

Yup. It was very interesting, indeed.

 

An impassioned mom, babe in arms, addresses a large congregation of angry citizens who attended today’s OccupySLO rally in SLO County’s court house plaza. 

 

Over 300 people representing an obvious cross-section of SLO County’s middle class filled the court house plaza at noon, today, and called loudly for far-reaching political, financial, economic and social reform.

Reminiscent of an old time revival meeting, the assembly cheerfully repeated each phrase spoken by OccupySLO’s local spokesperson, Evan Sylvester, as he led the gathering toward approval of a “99% Declaration” recently issued by Occupy Wall Street protestors now occupying a New York City park in downtown Manhattan, near Wall Street.

The Chautauqua-like call and response has come to be known as “The People’s Mic.”  It developed after New York City officials refused anti-Wall Street protestors the right to use sound amplification equipment.

Here are excerpts from Sylvester’s statement:

“Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage.

Neoliberalism is your future stolen.

Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks.

It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity.

This has to stop!

We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice.

We must change, we must evolve.”

Thus inspired, the newly forged congregation then marched along downtown San Luis Obispo streets, paying ceremonial visits to Chase Bank and Bank of America, and calling on throngs of Saturday afternoon shoppers and sightseers along the way:

 “We are the 99 percent! You are the 99 percent! Don’t watch, join us!”

To get the full flavor of it, please click on this album of photos to be found at this Picasa link.

Check back for updates.

Today will be VERY interesting

 

The Google map above is said to show locations across the USA where Occupy Wall Street events are planned for today, October 15, 2011

 

Full disclosure requires me to announce that, last week, via a route too byzantine to describe, I became a temporary member of OccupySLO’s ad hoc steering committee, which then included four, bright, earnest, articulate youths, two grizzled ex-hippies and one college professor. 

During ensuing days, the 24-hour fever-pitch labors of the four young Turks and their myriad compatriots, as they’ve planned and prepared for today’s “International Day of Action,” has totally exhausted we elder three,

The Occupy Wall Street website bills today’s action as part of a “massive global uprising…a new beginning, a global fight on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid and dignity.”

As Bob Dylan once sang (and still does), “There’s revolution in the air.”

If the energy and commitment I’ve observed over the last week as these kids have gone about preparing today’s “uprising” is any indication, the prevailing power establishment, here and on up the line, is about to wake up.

Occupy SLO leadership emerges, steering committee formed, basic strategy identified.

 

 

San Luis Obispo resident Evan Sylvester addresses Occupy SLO general assembly in Mitchell Park last Tuesday evening.  Sylvester has emerged as the organization’s temporary spokesperson.  His tenure, like that of his five fellow steering committee members, is subject to renewal in 30-days.

 

 

About 35 representatives of SLO County’s 99% met in Mitchell Park, Tuesday, October 11, and officially became the movement’s local leadership cadre. 

A steering committee was chosen.  A temporary spokesperson named Evan Sylvester was selected. Working committees were identified.  As Sylvester explained, “Our immediate and primary goal will be to expand our membership base.”

I took many photos of the gathering and scribbled many a note, but I do not have time to write a full report at this moment.  More tonight, I promise. 

Here’s Krugman’s take on the appointment of Jeff Immelt to head Obama’s job creation panel. Small wonder the Occupy Wall Street movement is growing exponentially

 

 

Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal blog dateline today:

 

October 11, 2011, 9:59 am

Intellectual Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

Oh, my. Jeff Immelt, who President Obama for some reason appointed to head his job creation panel, insists that what’s good for GE is good for America:

I want you to root for me. Look, every one in Germany roots for Siemens, everyone in Japan roots for Toshiba, everyone in China roots for China South Rail, I want you to say, win GE.

I think this notion that it’s the population of the US against big companies is just wrong.

Wow. First, the macro picture. Here are corporate profits versus employee compensation, both measured as index numbers with the 2001 business cycle peak= 100:

We’ve all grown together! Or, actually, not.

Also, GE isn’t in any important sense an “American” company. More than half its employees are overseas. I’m sure Immelt would claim that this is just what he needs to do to compete; but in that case, he can’t have it both ways and also demand that we cheer for GE as an American champion.

Awesome cluelessness. And this is the head of a job-creation task force in a Democratic administration?

A San Francisco video and the 50 best Occupy Wall Street signs

 

 

 

The 50 Best Signs From #OccupyWallStreet

Maniza Naqvi. Poet Laureate of Zuccotti Park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes on Zuccotti Park

One:  Mic Check! A Pay Check Away From You.

 

Mic check!

They are just a pay check away from being you. Take strength

Keep your courage, for yourself

And for them, they need you.

They who are today up there

Imprisoned-- parked in concrete shelves—scraping the skies.

In these towers rising all around you

Surrounded by walls

Clinging to a useless fantasy that these streets are meant to lead them

To those paved with gold  

But no!  Yours is the golden path.

You who sit here in the park, enclosed by police barricades-

Under an October night sky without stars

Sounds of your drums, the police sirens

Ongoing construction called Freedom

Corner of Trinity and Liberty.

And a Sign that says no skateboarders allowed in the Park.

Winter’s mist begins to rise off the damp pavements.

You  see the lit windows high above

And you think they shine like places light years distance from you

Here in the park in the darkness below,

As though signaling to you.

Silhouettes framed in the windows high up above you

In amber light, they appear caught in an eternity of fear, petrified.

And you sympathize

For rents have to be paid, mortgages met

What happens if there is no pay check?

They know they are just a paycheck away from you.

As you Mic check, in your attempt to reach them,

They know this too: it is not light that distances them from you---

They are just a pay check away from you.

 

Notes at  Zuccotti Park Two:  Truth Parked

You park those questions of yours

Whose words you sense form truths

In the margins

Of your note book and note taking

In the in between spaces.

Here, where you’ve parked those questions

Truth arrives, resides fleetingly

As if an encampment of nomads

And refugees—who know that sooner or later

Concerns for hygiene will erase them.

Outside the windows of your places

From where you dare not look out

Frightened by the prospect of something new-

In these in between spaces

From the margins you know have spilled out

Whole articulate manifestos in these between spaces.

In these margins you’ve park the truth.

As you sit around your conference tables

Frowning with purpose into your blackberries

Avoiding looking outside your windows at all costs

Trying to ignore the sound from the streets below you

Taking notes diligently, religiously, faithfully

You know half in dread have exhilarated that

you’ve heard this sound these words all before

Its time you know:

It is possible, not just inside your head

To change the score.

Where does it breath?

This truth—so fleetingly

So where does it breath before it goes?

In those spaces, it lies amongst the lies. 

In the margins,

Of note books, like yours

In the deviations from

Dutiful and diligent copious

Official note taking.

In the pauses

And cracks.

In the whys?

In the : Oh really?

In the opposite

In the opposition.

In the pauses and halts

Before, during and after

The Whys?

That’s where it tries to breath,

Move,

Dance.

March—and skateboard and bike.

It tries.

That’s the space:

In between the in between places.

You say you’ve heard it all before and

You say that

Truth does not bear repetition.

But Repetition can bare truth.

 

Notes on Zuccotti Park Three: Prophets of a New Age.

You are the transforming sages

Of an advancing age bringing a way forward that is new--

This autumn new flowers bloom

Here in the park 

You are the prophets

Talking of new human relationships

Built on friendships and cooperatives

You are the wealth of nations

You are the

Prophets of a new age

In a world

Where profits are made for a few

On speculation and nothing produced

Where citizens are reduced

To statistics of foreclosure and homelessness

And joblessness grows

And people are laid off every day

And factories and farms are closed.

And freedom of speech becomes undisclosed.

You are the wealth of nations

You are the

Prophets of a new age.

Out here shivering and staying out in the cold

Trying to cure

Your country ---the world

Of an unchecked epidemic of greed.

Here in the park you are the transforming sages

You are the wealth of nations

You are the

Prophets of a new age.

 

Notes on Zuccotti Park Four: Mic-Check-Mic-Check

Mic-check-Mic Check

Fingers shivering, quivering, fluttering in approval

Every single sentence, words, repeated, amplified, expanded

By people

Standing

Side by side.

The ones in front say and hear

What the ones in the back say and hear

There is no front there is no back

Everyone speaks and repeats

Everyone a leader here.

Everyone a reporter here

Everyone a historian and the documenter here.

Mic-check Mic Check

There is another way

Mic-check Mic check

Rampant greed is not the way

Mic check, Mic check

Stop the wars and killings

Wonder why the media aren’t embedded here.

Mic check, mic check

Create jobs instead of wars

Mic Check—mic check

Time to check if basic needs are being met

Mic check mic check

Wasteful wants cannot go on.

Mic check Mic Check

Food, shelter, jobs for all!

Mic Check, mic check

Tax the wealthy commensurate to their wealth

Mic check Mic Check

Question how they made their wealth

Question how to society they pay this debt.

Mic check Mic Check

Make them payback  taxpayers wealth

Mic Check Mic Check

Philanthropists my ass!

Mic Check mic check

To adjust for all the years that the rich have not been taxed—

Erase all student debt—

Mic Check mic check

Refinance and infuse cash to homeowners

Remove a portion of their debt

Fingers shivering, quivering, fluttering in approval

Each single sentence, words, repeated, amplified, expanded

By people

Standing,

Side by side.

The ones in front say and hear

What the ones in the back say and hear

There is no front there is no back

Everyone speaks and repeats

Everyone a leader here.

Everyone a reporter here

Everyone a historian and the documenter here.

 

By Maniza Naqvi

Posted by Maniza Naqvi at 12:15 AM | Permalink

Occupy San Luis Obispo gets rolling

 

 

Yesterday evening, on the way to my gig as a Buddhist “spiritual advisor” out at the Men’s Colony, I drove past SLO County’s court house plaza a bit before 5 pm.  It’s always wise to first scout the scene. 

Via email, I’d learned that the redoubtable Pete Evans was planning an Occupy Wall Street demonstration set for that hour, so I expected I’d find two or three of our usual suspects already in evidence. 

The place was empty. 

Not a propitious sign, I thought.

But after parking the truck, collecting my camera and note pad, then hurrying down the intervening blocks from the Palm Street parking structure, I was heartened to discover the gaggle of ne’er-do-wells pictured above. 

Since, hanging about would have made me late for “work,”  I quickly snapped a few photos and counted the heads.  Just a bit over 50, I calculated. 

Pretty good.  Not bad.  We’ll see.

To those who may be interested in growing this movement locally, here’s Pete Evans address: riki77@gmail.com. 

I’m thinking about signing on.

In fact, something truly is happening. Here’s proof

 

Wildly improbable turnout: Eighty plus Atascadero citizens answer the local Democratic Club’s call to protest Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to approve Obama’s jobs bill. 

 

I promised I’d show up at Kevin McCarthy’s Atascadero office today to help the local Democratic Club protest our congressman’s refusal to vote for Obama’s jobs bill. I was virtually certain that Tina and I would be just two among no more than a half-dozen aging hippies doddering past Kevin’s doorstep, so we both had to drag ourselves downtown by great force of will.

Imagine our surprise, then, upon discovering nearly 80 angry locals crowding the reprobate’s parking lot, many bearing protest signs and all voicing righteous, “I’ve had enough!” indignation.

For a time, the gathering milled and nattered about: old veterans greeting one another, but also welcoming folks never before met, many younger than fifty years old and some younger even than thirty! You know, dads and moms with little kids.  A representative cross-section of the city, perhaps?

Reporter/photographer David Middlecamp of SLO County’s Tribune snapped some photos, scribbled some notes.

After a time, the club’s leadership speechified by turns, extolling the Occupy Wall Street movement and loudly damning banksters and corporate chieftains to loud and cheering applause.

But for me, the truly telling event occurred later, in the produce section at Albertson’s market. 

A woman we’d glimpsed earlier among the protestors suddenly appeared and tapped me on the arm. When she had our complete attention she said: “I just wanted you to know, that was the first time I’ve ever protested anything. I’ve never done anything like that before.” Her eyes were a touch shiny  . “But what’s going on now in this country is just plain wrong,” she continued. “I felt I had to do something.”

Uh oh, Mr. Bernanke.  Red sky in the morning, pirate captain take warning.

Something is happening and you do know what it is, don’t you, Mr. Bernanke?

 

 

Multiplying events are forcing irrevocable decisions.  Obama’s limousine liberals are still running and running, but finding it ever more difficult to hide. Glenn Greenwald’s stinging whip-lash is driving ever larger numbers sharply leftward again.  Meanwhiles, the so-called “progressive” founder of the very successful blog Talking Points Memo has taken a resolute stand, well above the salt.  

Comes now the emerging voice of American journalist and blogger David Seaton whose offering today is so insightful I’ve copied it in its entirety here below:

 

The Worm in the Big Apple Turns

To avoid what we are seeing in New York city... - middle class, university educated demonstrators camped out in the very middle of the world's financial district, questioning the system itself - could be one of the reasons why Wall Streeters, of all people, were such enthusiastic contributors to Barack Obama's campaign for president. Their idea, I imagine, being to harmlessly siphon off  all the progressive energy that the Bush administration had generated into, well... "change we can believe in"... a wise investment that has been paying off for them... up till now.

Two weeks after hundreds of demonstrators rallied one block from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to “occupy Wall Street”, Sarah Kunstler brought her two-year-old son to the park housing the ragtag protesters(...)  "I’ve been waiting for people in this country to get angry enough to come together,” Ms Kunstler said. Calling attention now to “staggering wealth disparity” between rich and poor and “corporate greed” will hopefully produce the kind of movement that will change Washington’s policies, she said. “I don’t want Will to grow up in a world where he measures himself and others by what they have,” she said. “I want a better future for my son.” Financial Times

So, now we have two "fringe", movements, the AstroTurf rebellion, Tea Party... heavily financed by people like the Koch brothers, promoted by Murdoch, reactionary, know-nothing that flowers in an America which murders its citizens without trial by remote control...

And this other thing, this "Occupy Wall Street" thing could be/might be the germ-seed of some sort of spontaneous twitching of what might be a future, human values based incarnation of a re-born American left.

What is at the center of this? Here it is in a nutshell.

Anthony Atkinson, an economist at Oxford University, has studied how several recent financial crises affected income distribution—and found that in their wake, the rich have usually strengthened their economic position. Atkinson examined the financial crises that swept Asia in the 1990s as well as those that afflicted several Nordic countries in the same decade. In most cases, he says, the middle class suffered depressed income for a long time after the crisis, while the top 1 percent were able to protect themselves—using their cash reserves to buy up assets very cheaply once the market crashed, and emerging from crisis with a significantly higher share of assets and income than they’d had before. “I think we’ve seen the same thing, to some extent, in the United States” since the 2008 crash, he told me. “Mr. Buffett has been investing.” - The Atlantic

The Tea Party is a populist, proto-fascist, political goon squad whose mission is protect the back of the "one-percent" and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is... well... for the moment just is. Standing there waiting for the weather to turn cold and hoping we all of us, everywhere, breathe some life into it.

This thing just might work... Unlike most of the "when you get there, there is no there, there" USA, New York, like Cairo and Madrid has significant, symbolic, public spaces. Wall Street and Brooklyn Bridge are world famous symbols (as were the Twin Towers). Anything that happens there is world news. Those groups that are formed in other American cities should send delegations to New York, because there, to quote Willy Sutton, is "where the money is", that is where the world's attention will be fixed.

For the moment it is a very timid beginning, nothing like the 30,000 + people of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid (you can't really compare it to Cairo's "regime change" square,can you?). Still, it is significant, because it is happening  in The Big Apple. Wall Street is the universal "symbol" of nearly everything that ails the world today.

I repeat, what the demonstrators need is three things:

1. Company

2. Company

3. Company

It would help if Sean Penn and Brangelina showed up, anything to keep America's media-star-crazed attention through just one more news cycle, because this is not, repeat, not, a click your mouse on PayPal moment. This is about going there, if only to hang out for an hour or so, before or after work, like extras in a movie... before digital special effects existed.

Humility, solidarity, those are the key words.

If you are anywhere in the area, try to make to the park where they are staying and help in any way you can. Just being there, only helping it to "look" like a mass movement is useful.

And it is good to remember that the world wont change until the USA does. So it is a privilege for New Yorkers to lead this movement and a privilege for anyone who can afford a plane, train or bus ticket and the time to join them. Go on and make a little history... it's your future. DS

Tomorrow will tell the tale

 

Which side will you choose?  You will, you know. 

 

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet

 

Plus these further illuminations:

http://lbo-news.com/2011/09/30/shaking-a-fist-at-the-nypd/

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2011/09/the_kids_still_all_right.html