Social Immobility: Climbing The Economic Ladder Is Harder In The U.S. Than In Most European Countries

The Great American Bubble Machine

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multi-billion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention …
But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals...

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Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'

Cheney praises strike, but seeks apology

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Obama: A disaster for civil liberties

Jake Tapper vs. Jay Carney on President Killing U.S. Citizens

Really, stop what you are doing and just watch this. It’s short. Even though you know what the ultimate position is, try to forget that for a minute and listen with fresh ears. This is simply astounding.
Via

ADR- Solitary Pursuits

Aaron David Ross: Brooklyn Resident, multimedia artist, and one half of Giallo-crusaders Gatekeeper (Merok) is here as ADR for this first full-presentation from Public Information.
Solitary Pursuits: an 8 track mini LP, a burning head-trip into electronic swamplands packed with science-fiction sonics.
Korg portraits in deep Melancholia. Slo-Mo Drexciyan swoon. Analog Echoes of the Arabesque, in heartbreaking miniature. 21C-Frippertronics. Sun-burst boogie splashes. Library Music Rushes.

Apparat - Song of Los (Director's Cut)

The Haqqani network and Pakistan

If I hear about the ‘Haqqani network’ and their collusion with Pakistan one more time I will be very, very upset. That interestingly is exactly what the members of the All-Parties Conference (APC) convened by Prime Minister (PM) Gilani did; they were all very upset, very, very upset and even some might say a little irate. And in their combined opinion the Haqqanis, whoever they might be, have nothing to do with the Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and even if they did it was at best a very ‘innocent’ relationship based on occasional roast lamb and chicken pulao parties and some entirely harmless social chitchat. Whenever it comes to the goings on in Afghanistan, all the ‘players’ have different points of view. First is of the US and its allies, including the Afghan government, and that be can summarised as ‘Pakistan bad, ISI bad, Taliban bad, Haqqanis very bad’ and they are all trying their best to make life difficult for the US and President Karzai. After 10 years in Afghanistan, the US has reached the point of exhaustion and wants to get most of its fighting men out as soon as possible. The problem for the US is that it does not want to leave a situation behind where the Taliban take over Kabul and much of Afghanistan soon after the US combat forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
Then there is the point of view of the Pakistanis or at least of the Pakistani ‘establishment’. For those who still wonder who exactly is the ‘establishment’, a look at the APC participants will give them the answer. The beards, the pirs, the Makhdooms, the epaulets and sashes, the Chaudhries, the Maliks, the Mians and the Syeds, the tribal sardars or their representatives and the occasional ‘ordinary’ MQM types were all there. The bureaucrats might not have participated directly but were the ‘event managers’ who prepared the guest list, decided upon the agenda and were responsible for what came out of the meeting. What came out was basically that the US has overstayed its welcome in Afghanistan by almost 10 years, and ‘thank you very much for the money you gave us’ but now please leave and let us do our ‘thing’. However, after a decent interval please do restore your financial aid.
What do the Taliban want? Well, first they would like to kill as many of the foreign ‘infidels’ as possible. While killing all these infidels they would also like to see the US and NATO forces leave as soon as possible so that they can re-establish their emirate in Afghanistan and continue the holy work they were doing when they were so rudely interrupted by the US infidels 10 years ago. Once back in power, they will kill many more infidels of the Muslim sort, and destroy all remnants of ‘modernisation’ once again.
As far as the truth is concerned, truth is always the first casualty of war. So now we have multiple truths pushed by the different participants in this ‘theatre’ of war. But there are some truths that apply to us the ordinary people in Pakistan but for most of us ‘strategic depth’ is a meaningless concept. For us, the real truths that matter are about load shedding, the deteriorating law and order situation, terrorism, galloping food price inflation, the dengue epidemic in Lahore, target killings in Karachi, corruption and a rapidly disappearing sense of hope in our future as a country. Yes, these are our truths and the Haqqani network is definitely one of them...

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Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain @'Pakistan Daily Times'

Dreaded militant hit squad goes rogue in Pakistan

Haqqani network senior commander captured

UK rewrites war crimes law at Israel’s request

:)

(Thanx HerrB!)

The Amy Winehouse Story - A Last Goodbye

Call by UK Government's Home Secretary to scrap the Human Rights Act

Today is the start of the Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester and the Home Secretary and Minister of State at the Equalities Office, Theresa May, hasn't wasted the chance to say something controversial and of great concern. In the BBC's article Home Secretary Theresa May wants Human Rights Act axed, she says that she wants the existing Human Rights Act 1998 (which puts the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law) scrapped and replaced with a Bill of Rights. Why?

I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it.

I see it, here in the Home Office, particularly, the sort of problems we have in being unable to deport people who perhaps are terrorist suspects.

Obviously we've seen it with some foreign criminals who are in the UK.

Trying hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that this is a blatant and shameful attempt to institutionalise and legitimise racism and xenophobia by the state, I have to ask if we're seriously expected to believe we don't already have legislation in place to permit deportation under such circumstances? And that such laws are so lax the only solution is to scrap the HRA?

I can't help but feel that the current administration's continuing swing to the extreme right of the political spectrum is epitomised by this suggestion and I do start to wonder how much the proposal is actually driven by the 'middle England' section of the population who voted for Prime Minister David Cameron and Mrs May in the first place. Certainly, it's difficult not to draw that conclusion when the tabloid newspapers read by middle Englanders - for example, the Daily Mail - routinely publish such scare stories under garish headlines like Terror suspect allowed to stay in Britain 'because deporting him would be unfair on his children' and Sex attacker we can’t deport gets £1,000 a month in handouts (... and, guess what, the father of two says it's his human right to live in Britain). Meanwhile, migrant women continue to be incarcerated in the Yarl's Wood immigration prison - and the ending of child detention has, as UK Indymedia points out, been "skillfully employed by the coalition government to avoid talking about the brutal and inhumane detention regime in general" [via].

Mr Cameron, interviewed on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, continued this avoidance of talking about these breaches of human rights when he said he wanted to change the "chilling culture" created by the HRA.

He cited an example of a prison van being driven nearly 100 miles to be used to transport a prisoner 200 yards "when he was perfectly happy to walk".

"The Human Rights Act doesn't say that's what you have to do. It's the sort of chilling effect of people thinking 'I will be found guilty under it'."

"The government can do a huge amount to communicate to institutions and individuals let's have some commonsense, let's have some judgment, let's have that applying rather than this over-interpretation of what's there."

This is a variation on the obnoxious "political correctness gone mad" smokescreen so beloved of reactionaries everywhere as an all-purpose way of denying everyone else their fundamental human rights.

Kai Chang deconstructed that particular meme in an essay called The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness" (link here) - and it still holds true five years later.

Simply put, the great "PC" cliché, as commonly deployed in mainstream discourse, is cultural propaganda designed to befuddle and misdirect while defending the current power structure. All politics deal with power relations, and [...] there’s a stark asymmetry of power between the defiant megaphone-wielders who complain of being constrained by humorless hypersensitivity from below, and the under-represented people of color, women, LGBT, disabled, poor, and otherwise marginalized or dispossessed people who have no choice but to absorb the linguistic, cultural, and physical barbs of the ruling class.

Mrs May's announcement might seem to be almost cynical in its timing. As Liberty, the organisation campaigning for human rights in the UK, notes, the Bill of Rights Commission public consultation is nearing its closing date.

This consultation asks ‘do we need a UK Bill of Rights?’ - we might be missing something here, but haven’t we already got a modern day Bill of Rights in this country? Yes we have; it’s called the Human Rights Act (and to the consternation of its critics it protects everyone in our country regardless of nationality, race, sex, wealth or the preferences of the powerful).

The public consultation is open until Friday 11th November 2011 so please get writing now. Why not encourage a friend or colleague to respond and double your efforts? To get you started read our six reasons why we don't need a replacement Bill of Rights. [via]

In the words of Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti:

Modern Conservatives should think again about human rights values that were truly Churchill's legacy.

Only a pretty 'nasty party' would promote human rights in the Middle East whilst scrapping them at home. [via]

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Image via the UK Human Rights Blog

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Cross-posted at Bird of Paradox

Abbas is punished by $200m cut in aid from US

PJ Harvey on The Andrew Marr Show (October 2, 2011)

Thanks Kaggsy!

Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces

Jon Anderson: Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces 

This new and comprehensive book offers a holistic introduction to cultural geography. It integrates the broad range of theories and practices of the discipline by arguing that the essential focus of cultural geography is place. The book builds an accessible and engaging configuration of this important concept through arguing that place should be understood as an ongoing composition of traces.
The book presents specific chapters outlining the history of cultural geography, before and beyond representation, as well as the methods and techniques of doing cultural geography. It investigates the places and traces of corporate capitalism, nationalism, ethnicity, youth culture and the place of the body. Throughout these chapters case study examples will be used to illustrate how these places are taken and made by particular cultures, examples include the Freedom Tower in New York City, the Berlin Wall, the Gaza Strip, Banksy graffiti, and anti-capitalist protest movements. The book discusses the role of power in cultural place-making, as well as the ethical dimensions of doing cultural geography.
Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a broad-based overview of cultural geography, ideal for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci and methodological techniques of cultural geography illuminate and make sense of the places we inhabit and contribute to. This is a timely synthesis that aims to incorporate a vast knowledge foundation and by doing so it will also prove invaluable for lecturers and academics alike.
HERE

Humanity...

Via

The quote comes from a telegram sent on the 17th May 1967, by the Situationist’s leading the Occupations Committee of the Sorbonne, to the Communist Party of the USSR.

In full the telegram said:
SHAKE IN YOUR SHOES BUREAUCRATS STOP THE INTERNATIONAL POWER OF THE WORKERS’ COUNCILS WILL SOON WIPE YOU OUT STOP HUMANITY WILL NOT BE HAPPY UNTIL THE LAST BUREAU- CRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST STOP LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE KRONSTADT SAILORS AND OF THE MAKHNOVSCHINA AGAINST TROTSKY AND LENIN STOP LONG LIVE THE 1956 COUNCILIST INSURRECTION OF BUDAPEST STOP DOWN WITH THE STATE STOP

#OccupyWallStreet: There's Something Happening Here, Mr. Jones

:)

Millionaires and bankers' friends...no wonder we have the most right-wing Tory government ever

NJPD quashing freedom of speech

Full Credit too: http://www.youtube.com/user/Charlie4Change
In response to last week's killing of Barry Deloatch at the hands of 2 New Brunswick police officers, demonstrators rallied at the site he was shot dead. One of the rally's organizers and an innocent bystander on her bicycle were arrested by an army of New Brunswick police officers in riot gear... for no good reason.
The investigating authorities still have not said why the officers killed Deloatch shortly after midnight on September 22, nor have they released the officers' names.
Video shot by Sean Monahan of New Brunswick.
Emotions ran very high Wednesday night as people poured into Ebenezer Baptist Church to discuss the recent fatal shooting of resident Barry Deloatch, and the steps needed to go forward and progress from the tragedy.
Hosted by the NAACP, several members of civic organizations, the Deloatch family and pastor Gregory L. Wallace urged everyone in attendance to work together, become active members of the community to make their voices heard, and to see the fight through to ensure that they did not lose a family member in the future.
Deloatch, 46, a resident of New Brunswick, was shot and killed by a bullet to his left side on Sept. 22 following a pursuit by two police officers on Throop Avenue.
The names of the officers have not been made public.
The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office has said that it was determined that Deloatch was not carrying a firearm at the time, but investigations continue as to whether he was in possession of another weapon.
As of Sept. 29, the Prosecutor's Office has not released additional information as to what that weapon may have been. On a recording of police radio transmissions from the night of the shooting, an officer is heard saying that Deloatch was attempting to strike the officers with a stick.
Bruce S. Morgan, president of the New Brunswick Area NAACP, said talk and planning was just as important as taking action, in order to formulate a successful plan to ensure that this is the "Last event in town under these circumstances."
"We're here to help," he said. "We stand with this family."
(Thanx Sander!)

Wall Street occupiers inch toward a demand—by living it

Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on Brooklyn Bridge

Protesters are blocked from crossing the Brooklyn Bridge by the NYPD during an Occupy Wall Street march. Photograph: James Fassinger
More than 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening during a march by anti-Wall Street protesters who have been occupying a downtown Manhattan square for two weeks.
The group, called Occupy Wall Street, has been protesting against the finance industry and other perceived social ills by camping out in Zuccotti park in New York.
During the afternoon a long line of protesters numbering several thousand snaked through the streets towards the landmark bridge across the East River with the aim of ending at a Brooklyn park.
However, during the march across the bridge groups of protesters sat down or strayed into the road from the pedestrian pathway. They were then arrested in large numbers by officers who were part of a heavy police presence shepherding the march along its path.
At one stage 500 protesters were blocked off by police on the bridge. At least one journalist, freelancer Natasha Lennard for the New York Times, was among those arrested. "About half way across the group of people who wanted to occupy the bridge launched their action and stepped into the road. They wanted to get arrested. It was sort of the idea," said Yaier Heber, one of the marchers.
But others said the sit-down protest appeared to happen only after the protesters were deliberately blocked off by police after actually being allowed onto the roadway. "They met the police line and ended up being arrested one by one," said Damon Eris, another protester.
The march ended in chaotic scenes with police buses driving up the bridge to be filled with arrested marchers. The packed buses then drove off to central booking. Meanwhile, other marchers waited at the bottom of the bridge's Manhattan side and cheered as some released protesters, or those who had escaped being blocked off, came back down. "Let them go! Let them go!" was a frequent chant.
It was a different scene from the night before when an equally large march had ended up at the city's police headquarters. That demonstration had been against the brutal treatment meted out by some police on protesters on a march the weekend before. Video of one senior police officer spraying pepper spray on female protesters went viral on the internet and drew widespread condemnation.
But the incident did help put the Occupy Wall Street movement into American newspapers and TV shows that had hitherto paid it little attention. The group, drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, say they are inspired by social movements in Spain and the Arab spring. Last week the protesters attracted numerous celebrity visits, including actor Susan Sarandon and film-maker Michael Moore. This week they are expected to get an injection of support from local labour unions.
The movement has also started to spread in significant numbers to several other major cities. On Saturday in Los Angeles hundreds of protesters marched on the city hall with the intention of starting a similar encampment. In Boston protesters have already started camping out in Dewey square, near the city's financial district. Unlike in New York, where protesters are not allowed to create shelter in Zuccotti park, Occupy Boston has been able to set up rows of tents.
Paul Harris @'The Guardian'

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940)

This disturbing film records the successful experiments in the resuscitation of life to dead animals (dogs), as conducted by Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, Voronezh, U.S.S.R. Director: D.I. Yashin. Camera: E.V. Kashina. Narrator: Professor Walter B. Cannon. Introduced by Professor J.B.S. Haldane.
Download @'The Archive'

The Bankers and the Revolutionaries

#OccupyWallStreet

Bank Transparency by Jorge Alaminos Fernández

"The cleaner they look . . ." ". . . the more shit is hidden inside."
Via

Understanding the Theory Behind Occupy Wall Street’s Approach

Cameras are Weapons for #OccupyWallStreet

Three Concrete Demands to Hold Wall Street Accountable

Via

On The Poverty of Student Life (1966)

Considered in Its Economic, Political,
Psychological, Sexual, and Especially Intellectual Aspects,
With a Modest Proposal for Doing Away With It

by members of the Situationist International
and students of Strasbourg University 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Notes

(PDF)

Generation of Debt: The University in Default and the Undoing of Campus Life (pamphlet)

Via

President Obama shouldn’t be afraid of a little class warfare

#OccupyWallStreet

NYPD leads thousands of protesters into the traffic lane of the Brooklyn Bridge, before halting the procession halfway across, setting up barricades in front and behind, and arresting hundreds.

Occupying, and Now Publishing, Too

NYPD Mass Arrests of Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Firsthand Account from AlterNet Staffer Trapped on Bridge

At the time of this posting, hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters, members of the press and bystanders are being penned by the police on the Brooklyn Bridge, waiting to get arrested one by one. (The livestream is in the previous post.) According to eyewitnesses, the NYPD closed the bridge to traffic as the surge of protesters arrived, but then used the crowd's presence on the roadway to corral them in on both sides, so that no exit is possible.

AlterNet's Kristen Gwynne is among the crowd, and here is what she just told us by phone:

"They're arresting us one by one. I just asked a cop and they said they're going to arrest all of us. There are hundreds of people who dont have room to sit down. We're just clammed in."

"I'm probably going to be arrested in the next hour or two."

While some reporters and members of the press who were walking with the protesters are sharing their fate, Kristen says others are separate: "There are fancy-looking press in suits, totally separate from everyone else, fifty feet from us."

As for the morale of the crowd, she reports, "It was amazing coming over when we took the bridge. There was so much energy and pride and courage. We tried to push back for a while, then they started arresting us."

"Some people are upset, but mostly people are hanging tight, dealing with it, waiting to get arrested." 

UPDATE, 6:07 pm, Kristen reports via text: "Now it's raining. There are still hundreds of us, people are putting backpacks on their fronts, so cops don't take them when we're arrested."

She says that rumors in the crowd include the suggestion that the Lawyers Guild is working on bail money for the arrested protesters and negotiations with the cops. She says, "a friend told me there's a rumor this is over. It's not over."

As for morale? The remaining protesters are huddled together under umbrellas singing "this little light of mine."

UPDATE, 6:26 pm, Kristen reports: "Now it's pouring and we're huddled five people to an umbrella. People just sang that [Rihanna] song "you can get under my umbrella. " Spirits are high and people are sharing what they have and coming together to protect each other."

She adds, "Probably not much longer until I am arrested. Some people have to use the bathroom!"

UPDATE, 6:32pm, Kristen reports by phone: "Protesters are asking able-bodied male people to go up to the cops and accept their arrest, to speed along the process. Boyfriends and girlfriends are kissing each other goodbye as the guys go off to get arrested." 

The pace of the arrests, she says, "is still pretty slow, but this is strong in size and we're probably all going to get arrested soon."

6:40pm: A police officer told Kristen that there were less than 150 people left and they're all lining up to get arrested. "They also have a bus here, a New York city bus, that's taking people away," she says.

7pm: No word from Kristen in a while, which means we assume she has finally been arrested and taken to be booked and hopefully, released quickly. More information forthcoming as soon as we have it.
Kristen Gwynne & Sarah Seltzer @'AlterNet'

#OccupyWallStreet March to Brooklyn Bridge & Arrests

Raw Video: NYC Protest Arrests

yokoono Yoko Ono 

I love #OccupyWallStreet As John said, “One hero cannot do it. Each one of us have to be heroes.” And you are. Thank you. love, yoko

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested

allisonkilkenny allisonkilkenny 

Woman tells @democracynow reporter that police instructed them to cross the bridge bit.ly/orVKl5 #OccupyWallStreet

davidcnswanson David Swanson 

What's the expense of arresting each child or adult on the Brooklyn Bridge? How many arrests did JP Morgan Chase buy? #occupywallst

EmergentCulture Rohaan Solare 

Feed the Protest Responds to PayPal Denial by Accepting Bitcoin. bit.ly/qha0Ol #OccupyWallstreet

Bloomberg reveals that Koch Industries sold petrochemical equipment to Iran and paid bribes in six countries

In a bold and spectacular move, Bloomberg Markets Magazine wrote a story which does not only focus on several new revelations, but also provides a comprehensive overview about scandals of Koch Industries which happened during the last decades. The story also explicitly puts the well known political activities of the Koch Brothers in context with their highly questionable behaviour in business.

The story is a fine piece of investigative reporting and spans over 14 pages in the magazine, without the adverts. No less than 15 Bloomberg-journalists in several countries have worked on it. It is fascinating to see that such a major investigative piece about a highly political issue does appear in a business magazine and not in one of the more "traditional" political magazines or newspapers.

This is Pulitzer-Prize territory. This article is destined to make large waves, not just because of the particular revelations, but also because of the highly impressive and almost surprising depth of reporting. It is obvious that no expense was spared for this article. Next to Jane Mayer's ground breaking piece about the Koch Brothers in the New Yorker, this article by Bloomberg Markets Magazine undoubtedly represents another PR-disaster for the Koch Brothers, and could also have severe consequences...

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Patrick @'Political Gates'

Koch brothers spooked by forthcoming story

NaomiAKlein Naomi Klein

Getting a little tired of people playing Extreme Activist Makeover with #occupywallstreet Who cares what they r wearing? Deeds matter.