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Occupy your police department: A useful reminder
11.04.2011
02:45 pm
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Teargas at 14th & Broadway in Oakland, October 25 2011
 
This may strike some as trivial, but it can have important implications. YouTube user BLKPXLS brings us a bit of footage from the evening of Occupy Oakland’s General Strike, about which he notes:

This how to properly engage with police when they do suspicious things. We were riding by on bikes and noticed hes hiding his name and has no badge number. SO we decided to ask him. He did not answer, we asked a ranking officer is that policy? The LT. quickly went about fixing his attitude. This is a common practice among cops at occupy’s around the US .That way he/she cannot be named or referenced if he participates in police miss-conduct . Its in most police departments policies that all officers in uniform must show some form of identification. OPD does not wear badges with #‘s, how do we hold anyone accountable?

THANKS OPD LT C.WONG for stepping up and holding the officer accountable on camera!

 
This might remind us of the extremely salient fact that as investors in society and our police departments, we have a right to know the identity of EVERY officer enforcing the law.

Unfortunately, depending on the general temperament of the PD in your area, this could be a risky move. So be careful, and big up BLKPXLS and all camera-armed cop-watchers on the ground.
 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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11.04.2011
02:45 pm
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Gov. Scott Walker heckled by Occupy Chicago


The face of an idiot.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was heckled for six solid minutes this morning by fifty Occupy Chicago supporters in front of an audience of 300 people at a breakfast appearance.

When they were finished harassing the hapless, soon-to-be-former WI Republican governor, the protesters left the event at Chicago’s Union League Club.

Around fifty people chanted things like “Union busting. It’s disgusting” and “We are the 99 percent.”

After the protesters left, politically tone-deaf, about-to-be-recalled-from-office Walker said, “The bottom line is, no matter how loud you shout, the facts are the facts. The facts are that our reforms have worked and continue to work in the state of Wisconsin.”

Look into his beady little eyes. Even Walker’s eyes look like they’re sweating. This is a man terrified on one hand, and yet in deep, deep denial on the other. As the Firesign Theatre once said: “A stiff idiot is the worst kind.”
 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker heckled at Chicago’s Union League Club from WBEZ on Vimeo.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.03.2011
10:20 pm
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Download immortal Technique’s ‘The Martyr’ for free
11.03.2011
08:52 pm
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More Occupy-themed free music, and a big tIp of the hat to DM commenter Frank W for alerting us to this. The words “Immortal Technique”, “new mixtape” and “free download” should be enough to catch the more discerning listener’s ear, but if you’re new to this excellent MC let’s just say he’s the real deal. If you want to know more, his full, extraordinary biography can be found on the Viper Records website (as can his essay The Legacy of Bin Laden which is well worth reading.)

The Martyr features guest spots from Dead Prez, Joell Ortiz, Diabolic and more on the mic, and production from J Dilla, Southpaw and the man himself. On the track “Rich Man’s World (1%)” he puts himself in the mind of a genuine one-percenter and shows just how much he doesn’t give a shit what the other 99% of us think (“I hope you got good credit bitch/If not better get a new job with benefits”) - all over that naggingly familiar riff from “Money Money Money” by Abba.
 
Immortal Technique “Rich Man’s World (1%)”
 

 
Immortal Technique is currently on tour through-out the US in support of The Martyr (he’l be coming to a city near you pretty soon, check the dates on the Viper website). but in the meantime you can download the 16 tracks here, so get clicking.

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.03.2011
08:52 pm
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Protesters stage sit-in at Republican leader’s office today, still there


You won’t be smiling for long, ruling class son of a peeg dog!

While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was tied up over at the Capitol Building, where Republicans blocked a $60 billion infrastructure bill today that would have created thousands of jobs, approximately thirty out-of-work protesters staged a sit-in at McConnell’s Senate office.

The protesters, who were organized by a group called OurDC, took every chair and much of the floor-space of the GOP leader’s Russell Building office as McConnell’s aides went about their work. The group claimed no affiliation with Occupy Wall Street.

As of 3 p.m EST, the protesters are still there and said they wouldn’t leave before they got a face-to-face meeting to discuss jobs with the turkey-necked obstructionist Republican Senator from Kentucky.

Nicely done. Keep the heat on these Republican motherfuckers. It’s fantastic to watch these guys squirm. Why make it easy on them?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.03.2011
05:27 pm
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Tea party idiot ‘yells names’ at Elizabeth Warren


 
Last night at the start of an Elizabeth Warren campaign meeting in Brockton, MA, some sad, scared little man on the wrong side of history expressed his support for the Tea party and called Warren a “socialist whore.”

Via Huffington Post:

After the event, Warren reflected on the man’s outburst, which she said was her first such encounter. “I actually felt sorry for the guy. I really genuinely did. He’s been out of work now for a year and a half. And bless his heart, I mean, he thought somehow it would help to come here and yell names,” she told HuffPost.

The assault stuck with Warren, and she continued to think about it throughout the night. Hours later, she she said she wasn’t upset with the man himself, but rather with those who attempt to channel his anger in a malevolent direction. “I was thinking more about the heckler. I’m not angry with him, but he didn’t come up with the idea that his biggest problem was Occupy Wall Street. There’s someone else pre-packaging that poison—and that’s who makes me angry,” she said.

Did you get to the end where he tries to dramatically storm out and the door is locked? Bless his pointed little head!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.03.2011
04:30 pm
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Media Reacts To Conan’s Same-Sex Wedding News
11.03.2011
04:03 pm
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Johnny Carson’s comic psychic “Carnac the Magnificent” merely held an envelope to his head, but Conan O’Brien? He really pushes the envelope. As you’ll see.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.03.2011
04:03 pm
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Slavoj Žižek speaks about Occupy Wall Street on Fox News?


 
Yeah, you wish… Me too! Sorry for the bait and switch, folks, but I’ll try to make it up to you with a new half-hour video of Žižek, below, as seen on Al Jazeera last week.

I do have a point, though, for leading you here under false pretenses: The fact that you are interested to see what Slavoj Žižek (or someone like him) would say about Occupy Wall Street, and especially hearing it said on Fox News, is why Roger Ailes needs to do a very quick revamp of his product if he doesn’t want Fox to seem like it’s yesterday’s news…

It’s been interesting to watch how Fox News keeps calling on the very same lame-brained group of talking heads they always call on, to discuss Occupy Wall Street. Like they can’t rotate in ANYONE new to shake things up even a little bit? OWS has upset the Fox News apple cart in a big way. They have no idea how to deal with it, understand it, or even process it intellectually, let alone report on it, and that is becoming more and more obvious every day.

How many variations on the themes of “dirty hippies,” “they don’t know what they want,” “they’re a bunch of violent socialists who are just jealous of rich people (like us and our masters)” and of course, “ACORN!” are there?

I’ve just counted four.

Predictable but hilarious. In less than two months Fox has nearly totally lost its once secure place in the national conversation. They’re floundering very, very badly. They’ve fumbled the ball.

Here’s how I see it: Fox News post-Occupy Wall Street is like The Spice Girls the day after Geri Haliwell left the group. Their entire shtick became anachronistic in a single day.

This is what Occupy Wall Street has done to Fox News, not to mention the rest of the far Reichwing opinion outlets. From talk radio to the various editorials written byTea party twits on WorldNetDaily, what’s been on evidence for the past few weeks is that there is almost zero capability on the part of people who think that way to absorb what is happening because it is happening so incredibly quickly. It’s taken them completely by surprise.

Indeed, the scales have rapidly tipped in the past few weeks and there are shifting sands beneath our feet as I type this. My feet and yours, not just Bill O’Reilly’s or Rupert Murdoch’s. I don’t think anyone, right of left, has a full picture of what’s going on, or exactly where it’s headed, but what should be crystal clear to every person in the world capable of critical thinking is that something big, something very major and something potentially fantastic has happened and it is going to continue to happen for some time to come. Like it or not, this is not a prediction, it is a statement of fact.

The genie is way out of the bottle, but you won’t hear about this from entities (like Fox News) who are threatened by what’s happening. Some of the most objective reporting on what’s occurring in America—and when I say “objective” I mean to impart, in this instance, not an anti-American bias but a NON-American point of view, there is huge difference—is coming from Russia Today and Al Jazeera. You want interesting news, considered opinions, intelligent reporting and something beyond the empty calories of the shrieking taking heads, then check both networks out.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek was recently given nearly 30 minutes on Al Jazeera to speak about global revolutionary movements and what’s coming next. Can you imagine the sparks that would fly if Žižek was invited on to The O’Reilly Factor or Sean Hannity’s program?

Why not? If it’s good for ratings, it’s good for ratings. Isn’t that all Ailes really cares about? Well, if so, Fox News will need to update their modus operandi—and pronto, too—to keep up with such rapidly changing events. The thing is, I don’t think they can go on as they have in the past. Not because I think their audience has, or is going to, “wise up” all of a sudden because of what they see happening with OWS (although some of them will). No, my contention is very simply that Fox News is becoming too predictable, even for their admittedly not very intellectually demanding viewers. That’s saying a lot.

Ann Coulter? Hmmm, I mean, I wonder what her take is on Occupy Wall Street, don’t you?

Actually, no I fucking don’t and I never have. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what Ann Coulter thinks about anything, but beyond that, she’s boring, and predictable, and so is Fox News. The past two months have seen the network foundering badly. Fox has become too rote, too boring. Ann Coulter? She’s not even any fun to mock anymore. Roger Ailes needs to euthanize Ann Coulter and push her off the gangplank just like he did with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. She’s the poster child for everything that’s wrong with Fox News right now. Put her and the rest of them out to pasture soon or Fox News will be just like the post-Geri Haliwell Spice Girls in 1998, becoming a glaring anachronism almost overnight.

Below, Slavoj Žižek on Al Jazeera last week:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.03.2011
02:40 pm
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Atari Teenage Riot ‘Black Flags’ - the first OWS anthem?
11.03.2011
10:23 am
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I have been waiting for a band or an act to put into music all the feelings that have been driving the Occupy movement. Music is still one of the fastest means of spreading a meme, and I think it’s a mark of how truly “popular” a movement has become when it has its own protest music that reflects the anger and desires of the protesters.

It seems rather fitting then that the first large-scale act to do so would be squat-rave and black block veterans Atari Teenage Riot. Alec Empire and Nic Endo’s Berlin-based anarchist mob have been screaming about this kind of thing since the early 90s, and it looks like the world has finally caught up with what they have to say. While personally I would have thought it would be a new act to break through representing a new generation, no-one can doubt ATR’s credentials when it comes to this kind of thing. In fact, maybe in this age of ultra-commodified music it would HAVE to take a more veteran, established act to represent OWS and Anonymous so as to avoid claims of false appropriation?

You have to hand it to ATR though, “Black Flags” is a pretty great tune. I’d say it’s one of their most accessible yet while retaining all that dark techno-punk scuzzy energy we know and love (metal guitars over distorted 909 drums? fuck yeah!). You can hear the track, and download it for free, right here:
 

  Atari Teenage Riot - Black Flags (feat. Boots Riley) by Alec Empire/ ATR
 
The video for ‘Black Flags’ has been put together using footage supplied by fans of the band, and they are still looking for more if anyone reading would like to get involved. Here’s a statement from the Alec Empire / Atari Teenage Riot Soundcloud page:

In the past decade we have witnessed how dangerous corruption can be for ordinary citizens, from Fukushima to the financial crisis, we could even include the current phone hacking scandals in the UK in this. The list goes on. Almost weekly more shocking news is being published. Corporate greed has too often put the lives of people in danger.
Historically, the Black Flag stood for not belonging to a certain Nation State (due to the fact that no national colors were used on it). For the us, it means also that no individual can look at him/herself as superior to others just because of his/her national identity.
The mainstream media often looks at “consumers” and labels them as “apathetic.” But as the protests around the world have indicated, there is more political activism than ever before. And not only that, we see the same activism and energy at our concerts.
Cynics always find many reasons for not doing anything and being miserable. Often they say that the world is too “complex” to get involved. We believe that even though the world is complex, there are some fundamentally powerful ideas. Respect for another human being, for example, is a fundamental idea that grants great power.
If you agree to the basic principles of equality and freedom, join us and make a statement!
...
If you want to be in the video and show that you support the ideals mentioned above, please send us the following footage:
• Take your mobile phone, webcam or any other camera and film yourself lip-synching the song Atari Teenage Riot - Black Flags (feat. Boots Riley) by Alec Empire/ ATR 
• Have a black flag in the background, or hold it while you’re lip-syncing. (The black flag motif will link all images together. If you don’t have one to hand, use a black T-shirt, pull it inside out, stick the arms into it…there you go.) 
• You can choose any location for it. If you want to do it at home, great. If you know a crazy location, do it there. (In front of your school or university? At a shopping mall? With your friends at a party?) 
• We will use fragments of all videos, which are sent in and ultimately add all of you to the official video. 
• If you want to support the idea but want to do so anonymously, you can cover your face. No problem.

Atari Teenage Riot ft Boots Riley “Black Flags”
 

 
Thanks to Liam Arnold at Shallow Rave.

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.03.2011
10:23 am
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Scenes From the Class War in Oakland, CA


 
Posted on reddit by lazed_and_confused with the title “The view from my Oakland office.” According to local media estimates, the crowd was approximately 12,000 strong.

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

—Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

 

 
Above, the Oakland branch of Chase bank, via Diane Jenkins on Facebook.
 

 
Above, protesters gather at the Port of Oakland.
 

 
Nice banner! (via Wonkette)

There are some more evocative photos of the Oakland General Strike in a gallery at the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.02.2011
10:41 pm
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Red vs. Blue: Do Democrats subsidize Republicans?
11.02.2011
07:02 pm
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This is a guest editorial from Dangerous Minds reader Em, expanding on some pointed commentary he’s made elsewhere on this blog. Em—who’ll keep his last name to himself, thank you very much—works in the financial industry:

I guess in every country you can find large numbers of people that truly believe something that just isn’t true. The US is special, however, in that we seem quite capable of believing things that are not only directly contrary to the truth, but that would actually result in the self-destruction of the very proponents of those ideas if they were allowed to completely run amok in our social, economic or political policies. Worse than this, the proponents of those same self-destructive policies will often demonize those that oppose them, applying a host of labels that they often successfully get to “stick” with surprising tenacity. Thus, people concerned with global warming are “liberals,” those proposing that a public health option should be made available are “socialists,” and those wanting a better break for the unions are often just labeled out-and-out communists. Sometimes, the vitriol and rhetoric are just so damned ignorant and self-defeating that you are tempted to turn tail and head back to the UK or elsewhere in Europe where things may not be perfect… but at least they are on average rational.

Of all of the issues out there that have gotten turned around and completely distorted, there’s one issue that, the more you look at the numbers and the facts, the more quickly you’ll move from angry laughter through bitter rage and then into sheer seething disgust. In a nutshell, that issue is the impact that the unions have had on federal taxes and which states are net receivers of federal tax money, and which are net donators. Playing with some numbers, I stumbled upon a fact that I suppose some economist out there somewhere must know, but that I’ve never seen mentioned. It is in my mind, at least, shocking, but before I go there let me remind us of a few basics, hum?

One interesting fact that some people are aware of is that the Red States (ie, those that tend to vote Republican) are almost invariably debtor states or (as I like to call them) hobo states, in that they take more federal funds than they deliver in taxes each year. You know the states –Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, New Mexico, Arizona and so on. These are the states always looking for (and getting!) a handout and yet where citizens are famous for declaring themselves “proud” and “self-reliant.” Conversely, the Blue or donor states (New York, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon and so on), these are the states that pay more in taxes to the federal government that they receive. These states tend to vote Democrat in presidential elections.

On the surface, of course, it certainly looks like the Red States vote Republican in order to pump tax money out of the Blue States into the hobo states’ hungry coffers. That much has been commented on by many and analyzed in fascinating detail by sources such as this one.

But I got to asking myself: What precisely, is the real source of wealth in the Blue States? Why is it that these states have so much extra cash that they can afford to be net donators of federal money to the Red States? And why are the Red States invariably in need of a handout? One could, of course, do some complex analysis around the concentration of big industries in certain areas, or perhaps look at per capita wealth concentration and then try to piece together some larger picture out of countless details. A bigass computer simulation wouldn’t seem inappropriate in this context.

Or it could be something far simpler than that. Anyone who has read my pieces on Dangerous Minds will know that I’ve been ranting about how the middle class is actually the engine of job creation and that one critical means by which the middle class has in effect been “capitalized” is through the unions and union wages. Looking across the pond, it’s no mistake that some of the most highly unionized countries in the world (Germany and Sweden) were in effect able to fund the bailout of the near-collapse of the EU. In other words, in countries like Germany and Sweden the middle class actually have money, and this disposable income in the hands of the many has a multiplicative effect on wealth creation.

So the question becomes: Is it true here in the US? In other words, could it possibly be that the main reason the donor/Blue States have extra cash with which to provide the Hobo/Red States with what is in effect a perpetual bailout is that the Blue States are more heavily unionized? At this point, the answer shouldn’t come as a surprise, but what did come as a surprise to me at least, was just how extreme the differences are. Consider the following table I generated showing the top 11 states in descending order of union membership matched with their federal tax outlay ratio. In other words, New York State is the most highly unionized state in the lower 48, followed by Washington and California and so on.


 
See that column on the right? That’s the ratio of federal tax dollars received to those paid. In other words, for every dollar of Federal taxes paid by residents of New York, they receive a mere 79 cents. What is hilarious is that the top 11 most-Unionized states happen to be the states that receive the least in Federal tax benefit compared to what they pay. In other words, the union states are the wealthy donor states. That these states have a surplus is obviously due to the increased wages of the unionized themselves, but also because of all the additional spending driven by disposable income. Perhaps more importantly, new jobs will be created in the donor states as some union employees attempt to strike out on their own and become suppliers to the industries in which they were employed.

How about at the bottom? You got it. Here’s a table of the least unionized states in the US, with their corresponding federal tax ratio:


 
With the notable (though marginal) exception of Texas, 10 of the 11 least unionized states in the lower 48 happen to be those that eat the most in federal tax money compared to what they pay.  Is this surprising? Maybe. But if you’ve paid any attention to all of the anti-Union rhetoric that has always flown around, then you will not only be surprised but disgusted. Some of these hobo states are precisely the ones that have launched persistent, long-term attacks on their unions.

More than the rhetoric, though, are the implications. The right has always proclaimed that unions kill wealth by pulling capital out of the hands of the wealthy, who have some innate and God-given talent to create more wealth and jobs. But what we see here is precisely the opposite: By pulling wealth out of the middle classes that they receive in the form of union wages, the rich inhabitants of those Hobo states have by no means made up the tax difference. In fact, they have converted their state into a hobo state, that the working unionized people in the Blue States must be taxed to support. Put in another way, every time a union is disbanded or disempowered in one of the hobo states, those of us living in the Blue States must in effect shell out more in order to cover their increasing tax gap.

At this juncture it may be worth comparing union membership to the other method of redistributing wealth: Taxation schemes. While in the short run increasing taxes on the wealthy will almost certainly be necessary in order to make a dent in the huge national deficit, what this analysis points to is that the real, “private” method of income redistribution is through the unions, where there is no Federal middleman. In other words, if we consider middle class capitalization as a necessary prerequisite for wealth creation, then the “left wing” method would be through taxation, but the right should consider union membership as the “private” non-governmental solution to the same problem.

An easy solution, therefore, presents itself: Examining the data across all 48 states, we can fairly easily assert that the breakeven level of union membership in a state (ie, for them to convert from a hobo state to a donor state) is somewhere between 10% to 15% of union membership. So how about this: Let’s push for a law that prohibits net Federal money from flowing into states with anything less than 10% union membership. Problem solved. Any state with union membership lower than this level is welcome to keep their federal tax proceeds but no more blue state money will be poured into their bottomless troughs.

The notable exceptions to this analysis are, of course, Alaska and Hawaii, both with high levels of union membership (with 23 and 22 percent union membership respectively). The additional costs associated with geographically remote and/or vast stretches of unpopulated territory are high enough that even high levels of union membership don’t push them into the black. But as long as they remain states of the US, it will probably be necessary to pump in federal funds, though care should be taken to encourage high levels of union participation less the drain on federal money becomes far greater than it is today.

So if federal money is generated directly or indirectly by the unions in the donor states, what form does the aid take as it goes into the hobo states? Ah, that’s a question better answered elsewhere, but the answer is fairly easy to guess. I’ll give you two hints, though: Hint number one is ‘Afghanistan’, and hint number two is ‘Iraq’.

About the author: Em was a founding member (with John Cale and others) of the New York punk band Doppler Effect in the early 1980s. After living in China in the late 80s, Em worked in the physics and electrical engineering space until 2002, at which time he moved into the financial world. In July, Em returned to the US after having lived in London since 2006 and is a member of the UMOUR art/event collective. He blogs at The Magic Lantern, his"litterbox of the soul.”

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Occupy Wall Street: A Banker Explains What Really Happened to America

Mad Max in America: Our Republican Future?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.02.2011
07:02 pm
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