Sunday, 23 October 2011
PressPausePlay: The Documentary Featuring Hank Shocklee (Free Download)
There’s a full length standard version and interactive version featuring extra behind the scenes footage available now that you can download directly from the film’s site. If you haven’t had a chance to check out this film at one of the many screenings that have been held around the world do yourself a favor and download it today, its an inspiring piece of work and must see for all creators!
@'Shocklee'
Mike Davis: No More Bubblegum
John Carpenter could have, and did. Almost a quarter of a century ago (1988), the master of date-night terror (Halloween, The Thing), wrote and directed They Live, depicting the Age of Reagan as a catastrophic alien invasion. In one of the film’s brilliant early scenes, a huge third-world shantytown is reflected across the Hollywood Freeway in the sinister mirror-glass of Bunker Hill’s corporate skyscrapers.
They Live remains Carpenter’s subversive tour de force. Few who’ve seen it could forget his portrayal of billionaire bankers and evil mediacrats and their zombie-distant rule over a pulverized American working class living in tents on a rubble-strewn hillside and begging for jobs. From this negative equality of homelessness and despair, and thanks to the magic dark glasses found by the enigmatic Nada (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), the proletariat finally achieves interracial unity, sees through the subliminal deceptions of capitalism, and gets angry.
Very angry.
Yes, I know, I’m reading ahead. The Occupy the World movement is still looking for its magic glasses (program, demands, strategy, and so on) and its anger remains on Gandhian low heat. But, as Carpenter foresaw, force enough Americans out of their homes and/or careers (or at least torment tens of millions with the possibility) and something new and huge will begin to slouch towards Goldman Sachs. And unlike the “Tea Party,” so far it has no puppet strings.
In 1965, when I was just eighteen and on the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society, I planned a sit-in at the Chase Manhattan Bank, for its key role in financing South Africa after the massacre of peaceful demonstrators, for being “a partner in Apartheid.” It was the first protest on Wall Street in a generation and 41 people were hauled away by the NYPD.
One of the most important facts about the current uprising is simply that it has occupied the street and created an existential identification with the homeless. (Though, frankly, my generation, trained in the civil rights movement, would have thought first of sitting inside the buildings and waiting for the police to drag and club us out the door; today, the cops prefer pepper spray and “pain compliance techniques.”) I think taking over the skyscrapers is a wonderful idea, but for a later stage in the struggle. The genius of Occupy Wall Street, for now, is that it has temporarily liberated some of the most expensive real estate in the world and turned a privatized square into a magnetic public space and catalyst for protest.
Our sit-in 46 years ago was a guerrilla raid; this is Wall Street under siege by the Lilliputians. It’s also the triumph of the supposedly archaic principle of face-to-face, dialogic organizing. Social media is important, sure, but not omnipotent. Activist self-organization — the crystallization of political will from free discussion — still thrives best in actual urban fora. Put another way, most of our internet conversations are preaching to the choir; even the mega-sites like MoveOn.org are tuned to the channel of the already converted, or at least their probable demographic.
The occupations likewise are lightning rods, first and above all, for the scorned, alienated ranks of progressive Democrats, but they also appear to be breaking down generational barriers, providing the common ground, for instance, for imperiled, middle-aged school teachers to compare notes with young, pauperized college grads.
More radically, the encampments have become symbolic sites for healing the divisions within the New Deal coalition in place since the Nixon years. As Jon Wiener observed on his consistently smart blog at www.TheNation.com: “hard hats and hippies — together at last.”
Indeed. Who could not be moved when AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who had brought his coalminers to Wall Street in 1989 during their bitter but ultimately successful strike against Pittston Coal Company, called upon his broad-shouldered women and men to “stand guard” over Zucotta Park in the face of an imminent attack by the NYPD?
It’s true that old radicals like me are quick to declare each new baby the messiah, but this Occupy Wall Street child has the rainbow sign. I believe that we’re seeing the rebirth of the quality that so markedly defined the migrants and strikers of the Great Depression, of my parents’ generation: a broad, spontaneous compassion and solidarity based on a dangerously egalitarian ethic. It says, Stop and give a hitch-hiking family a ride. Never cross a picket line, even when you can’t pay the rent. Share your last cigarette with a stranger. Steal milk when your kids have none and then give half to the little kids next door — what my own mother did repeatedly in 1936. Listen carefully to the profoundly quiet people who have lost everything but their dignity. Cultivate the generosity of the “we.”
What I mean to say, I suppose, is that I’m most impressed by folks who have rallied to defend the occupations despite significant differences in age, in social class and race. But equally, I adore the gutsy kids who are ready to face the coming winter on freezing streets, just like their homeless sisters and brothers.
Back to strategy, though: what’s the next link in the chain (in Lenin’s sense) that needs to be grasped? How imperative is it for the wildflowers to hold a convention, adopt programmatic demands, and thereby put themselves up for bid on the auction block of the 2012 elections? Obama and the Democrats will desperately need their energy and authenticity. But the occupationistas are unlikely to put themselves or their extraordinary self-organizing process up for sale...
Continue reading
Melbourne makes the...
...international news!
Though probably NOT for the reasons you wanted eh Doyle?
#OccupyWallStreet - Outing The Ringers
http://twitter.com/jsmooth995
A few thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, I've been watching it and going down there for a while now but hadn't had a chance to speak on it.
By the way when I say some news media people are "ringers," I don't necessarily mean that they deliberately obfuscate, or get orders from some shadowy figure to do so. I think they'll often just have a personal investment in the system and status quo that's being critiqued/threatened, so they'll naturally--without any need to conspire--have their perception skewed by an instinct to protect the status quo they're invested in. So though it's quite possibly not their intention to play the ringer, it's the function they wind up serving nonetheless.
"Rainbow in the Dark" instrumental provided by Das Racist
A few thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, I've been watching it and going down there for a while now but hadn't had a chance to speak on it.
By the way when I say some news media people are "ringers," I don't necessarily mean that they deliberately obfuscate, or get orders from some shadowy figure to do so. I think they'll often just have a personal investment in the system and status quo that's being critiqued/threatened, so they'll naturally--without any need to conspire--have their perception skewed by an instinct to protect the status quo they're invested in. So though it's quite possibly not their intention to play the ringer, it's the function they wind up serving nonetheless.
"Rainbow in the Dark" instrumental provided by Das Racist
The Cult of Illusion
'The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations.
It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality.
We have a right, in the cult of self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to be famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked.
It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street bankers and investment houses that willfully trashed the nation's economy, stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation.' p33
'This cult of distraction, as Rojek points out, masks the real disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It seduces us to engage in imitative consumption. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse, and political corruption.' p38
'We are a culture that has been denied, or has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. Most of us speak at this level, are entertained and think at this level.' p44
'Those who slip into this illusion ignore the signs of impending disaster. The physical degradation of the planet, the cruelty of global capitalism, the looming oil crisis, the collapse of financial markets, and the danger of overpopulation rarely impinge to prick the illusions that warp our consciousness. The words, images, stories, and phrases used to describe the world in pseudo-events (ie media) have no relation to what is happening around us.' p52
For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge. To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate stoic, existential, theological, and humanist ways of grappling with reality is to educate them in values and morals. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilisation is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condems itself to death.' p103
Extracts from
Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The end of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
(Thanx Distant Malaise!)
It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality.
We have a right, in the cult of self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to be famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked.
It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street bankers and investment houses that willfully trashed the nation's economy, stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation.' p33
'This cult of distraction, as Rojek points out, masks the real disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It seduces us to engage in imitative consumption. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse, and political corruption.' p38
'We are a culture that has been denied, or has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. Most of us speak at this level, are entertained and think at this level.' p44
'Those who slip into this illusion ignore the signs of impending disaster. The physical degradation of the planet, the cruelty of global capitalism, the looming oil crisis, the collapse of financial markets, and the danger of overpopulation rarely impinge to prick the illusions that warp our consciousness. The words, images, stories, and phrases used to describe the world in pseudo-events (ie media) have no relation to what is happening around us.' p52
For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge. To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate stoic, existential, theological, and humanist ways of grappling with reality is to educate them in values and morals. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilisation is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condems itself to death.' p103
Extracts from
Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The end of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
(Thanx Distant Malaise!)
25th Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert 2011 (Livestream)
Know Your Rights (the Future Is Unwritten)
Willie Nelson gets behind #OccupyWallStreet movement
Willie Nelson & his wife write a poem in solidarity with occupy wall street. We are all united!
Habituation
Susan Anson
Figure 6.4 With habituation, denial of the drug causes the person to be irritable and nervous. As on develops tolerance to a drug, he finds that he must take larger and larger doses to achieve the desired effect. Tolerance can occur with either habituation or addiction. With addiction, denial of the drug results in a withdrawal illness.
Via
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#OccupySydney Eviction 5AM 23/10/11
CassPF Cassie Findlay
5am dawn raid on#OccupySydney to minimise witnesses, media coverage of brutality & have element of surprise. Military tactics on citizens.
5am dawn raid on
Occupy Dame Street with Billy Bragg
Over 2,000 people marched in Ireland in solidarity with the Occupy Dame Street movement. Here are some of the people who are occupying and why they are doing it. Billy Bragg sang "There is Power in the Union" to show his support.
FatherBob FatherBob
Hard "occupying" own patch Sts.Peter and Paul,South Melb.,without inviting refugees from "Occupy" Melb. here to an asylum.
BoingBoing Boing Boing
Chinese web censors block terms related to "Occupy," to stamp out movement's spread in China goo.gl/mqjGR
Chinese web censors block terms related to "Occupy," to stamp out movement's spread in China goo.gl/mqjGR
Occupy movement will go on as long as the people are feeling aggrieved
Their grievances are diverse and not always articulate and they lack leadership. But that doesn't mean the Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread across the world can be airily dismissed. It's not really that hard to work out what they are protesting about: they feel they are being screwed. That is not surprising when American banks that were bailed out by the government a few years ago, partially at taxpayers' expense, are back merrily paying out fat bonuses to their executives. Meanwhile, unemployment in the US is at 9.1 per cent and people are selling their homes for less than they paid.
The "We are the 99 per cent" website that posts the comments of thousands of angry people sprang from a statistic that has become well-known in the US: 1 per cent of Americans hold 40 per cent of the nation's wealth. It gained impetus from a sharp increase in inequality, in terms of income and wealth.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty estimate that the top 10 per cent of Americans increased their share of total income from about 34 per cent to 50 per cent in the three decades to 2007, with that of the top 1 per cent going from 10 to 24 per cent.
Financial deregulation had a lot to do with it and the Bush administration's large tax cuts for the wealthy gave the trend a further boost. In the meantime, average incomes in the US have fallen by 7 per cent after inflation in the past 10 years. Americans normally are the last to begrudge people getting rich, but there are limits.
Thank heavens we don't have these problems in Australia. Well, not to the same degree. Unemployment is much lower and, although we are paying increasing amounts out of our own pockets for healthcare, we don't face the crippling medical expenses of many Americans, a frequent complaint on the 99 per cent website.
But in other respects we are heading in the same direction.
Incomes are distributed more equally in Australia than in the US, but not compared to many other western countries. And not if you are unemployed and trying to survive on a Newstart allowance of $35 a day that the OECD, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry and just about everyone else who has looked at the issue, other than the government, agrees is not enough to live on.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week show that the top 20 per cent of households earned on average 11 times more income than those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2009-10 -- $3943 a week compared to $360. The 11-times multiple is an increase from 8.5 in 2003-04.
After taking into account taxes and benefits and adjusting for family size, the gap still widens, but by much less, from a multiple of 4.8 to 5.4. Moreover, some of those on low incomes are relatively wealthy, notably retired people owning their own homes.
But the distribution of wealth as distinct from income is a whole different story. The ABS figures show that the top 20 per cent of households had 70 times as much net wealth as those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2009-10, on average $2.2 million compared to $31,829. One reason is that wealth typically builds up over a lifetime. But that does not explain why the gap is widening dramatically: for the bottom 20 per cent, net household worth rose by 10 per cent in the six years to 2009-10, compared to 36 per cent for those in the top 20 per cent. In dollars, the increase at the bottom was $2966, compared to $586,240 at the top. The ageing of the population is one factor, but it cannot account for such a large difference.
The most spectacular growth in wealth was at the tip of the top:
2.9 per cent of households had a net worth of $3m or more, almost double the proportion of six years earlier. Those with $7m or more comprised 0.6 per cent of households -- close to a tripling over six years -- and almost half of those were worth more than $10m.
Compulsory super was the way Paul Keating envisaged spreading the wealth. So far it hasn't worked. As the ABS says in its summary of the wealth figures, 75 per cent of households had some super assets in 2009-10, but its distribution was "very asymmetrical". While the average value of superannuation was $154,000, half of Australian households had less than $60,000. The average was dragged up by the top 20 per cent, whose average super was $370,000.
The uneven distribution makes all the more compelling the case for fairer taxation of superannuation. The flat tax of 15 per cent on contributions means a person in the highest income tax bracket gets a 31.5 per cent deduction, while the tax break for those in the lowest bracket is 1.5 per cent.
The Henry report estimated that the top 5 per cent of income earners in 2005-06 received 37 per cent of the total value of tax concessions. From next year, a new government payment directly into superannuation accounts will go some way towards evening the scales for lower-income earners, but still leave the tax system helping high-income superannuation balances to grow much faster.
Wealth is future income, whether for this or future generations. Not taxing it, as most other countries do through wealth or inheritance taxes, or taxing its accumulation more lightly, as we do for capital gains and superannuation and through negative gearing, means we are encouraging yet greater inequality.
According to New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, "any economic model that doesn't properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy". Roubini was one of the very few economists to predict the global financial crisis, so perhaps we should start listening to him.
If those at the top display the arrogance of former company chairman Don Argus, who has dismissed complaints about huge salary increases for chief executives by saying people could sell their shares if they didn't like it, they should not be surprised if the Occupy Wall Street movement grows into something that forces politicians to take notice.
Mike Steketee @'The Australian'
Yes - you read that right...The Australian!!! (I have taken the liberty of posting the full version here as The Australian is due to go behind a paywall in less than 24 hours from now. This piece deserves to be read freely by everyone)
The "We are the 99 per cent" website that posts the comments of thousands of angry people sprang from a statistic that has become well-known in the US: 1 per cent of Americans hold 40 per cent of the nation's wealth. It gained impetus from a sharp increase in inequality, in terms of income and wealth.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty estimate that the top 10 per cent of Americans increased their share of total income from about 34 per cent to 50 per cent in the three decades to 2007, with that of the top 1 per cent going from 10 to 24 per cent.
Financial deregulation had a lot to do with it and the Bush administration's large tax cuts for the wealthy gave the trend a further boost. In the meantime, average incomes in the US have fallen by 7 per cent after inflation in the past 10 years. Americans normally are the last to begrudge people getting rich, but there are limits.
Thank heavens we don't have these problems in Australia. Well, not to the same degree. Unemployment is much lower and, although we are paying increasing amounts out of our own pockets for healthcare, we don't face the crippling medical expenses of many Americans, a frequent complaint on the 99 per cent website.
But in other respects we are heading in the same direction.
Incomes are distributed more equally in Australia than in the US, but not compared to many other western countries. And not if you are unemployed and trying to survive on a Newstart allowance of $35 a day that the OECD, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry and just about everyone else who has looked at the issue, other than the government, agrees is not enough to live on.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week show that the top 20 per cent of households earned on average 11 times more income than those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2009-10 -- $3943 a week compared to $360. The 11-times multiple is an increase from 8.5 in 2003-04.
After taking into account taxes and benefits and adjusting for family size, the gap still widens, but by much less, from a multiple of 4.8 to 5.4. Moreover, some of those on low incomes are relatively wealthy, notably retired people owning their own homes.
But the distribution of wealth as distinct from income is a whole different story. The ABS figures show that the top 20 per cent of households had 70 times as much net wealth as those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2009-10, on average $2.2 million compared to $31,829. One reason is that wealth typically builds up over a lifetime. But that does not explain why the gap is widening dramatically: for the bottom 20 per cent, net household worth rose by 10 per cent in the six years to 2009-10, compared to 36 per cent for those in the top 20 per cent. In dollars, the increase at the bottom was $2966, compared to $586,240 at the top. The ageing of the population is one factor, but it cannot account for such a large difference.
The most spectacular growth in wealth was at the tip of the top:
2.9 per cent of households had a net worth of $3m or more, almost double the proportion of six years earlier. Those with $7m or more comprised 0.6 per cent of households -- close to a tripling over six years -- and almost half of those were worth more than $10m.
Compulsory super was the way Paul Keating envisaged spreading the wealth. So far it hasn't worked. As the ABS says in its summary of the wealth figures, 75 per cent of households had some super assets in 2009-10, but its distribution was "very asymmetrical". While the average value of superannuation was $154,000, half of Australian households had less than $60,000. The average was dragged up by the top 20 per cent, whose average super was $370,000.
The uneven distribution makes all the more compelling the case for fairer taxation of superannuation. The flat tax of 15 per cent on contributions means a person in the highest income tax bracket gets a 31.5 per cent deduction, while the tax break for those in the lowest bracket is 1.5 per cent.
The Henry report estimated that the top 5 per cent of income earners in 2005-06 received 37 per cent of the total value of tax concessions. From next year, a new government payment directly into superannuation accounts will go some way towards evening the scales for lower-income earners, but still leave the tax system helping high-income superannuation balances to grow much faster.
Wealth is future income, whether for this or future generations. Not taxing it, as most other countries do through wealth or inheritance taxes, or taxing its accumulation more lightly, as we do for capital gains and superannuation and through negative gearing, means we are encouraging yet greater inequality.
According to New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, "any economic model that doesn't properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy". Roubini was one of the very few economists to predict the global financial crisis, so perhaps we should start listening to him.
If those at the top display the arrogance of former company chairman Don Argus, who has dismissed complaints about huge salary increases for chief executives by saying people could sell their shares if they didn't like it, they should not be surprised if the Occupy Wall Street movement grows into something that forces politicians to take notice.
Mike Steketee @'The Australian'
Yes - you read that right...The Australian!!! (I have taken the liberty of posting the full version here as The Australian is due to go behind a paywall in less than 24 hours from now. This piece deserves to be read freely by everyone)
Planet Furball - 2011 Mix
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Black Cab (consistently one of the best live band in Melbourne!!!)
Here's video from a recent(ish) gig...
Down to a three piece, sheer Moroder/Motorik madness that ended up w/ covers of Heart & Soul and Rocket USA the last time I saw them - the guy nearest the camera is Steve Law (Zen Paradox)
Setlist from last gig @Cherry a couple of weeks ago
OK! I'm outta here...
Sharing IS Caring...#OccupyMelbourne 22/10/11
Spaceboy and I had a prior appointment with the Spensley Street Fair and the gawds of thunder this morning and then a 'hungy tummy' meant stopping for lunch* so we unfortunately missed the march from Fed Square. This is what we saw at OUR City Square too...
*NO 'Big Mucks'® for this boy!!!
(Photos by TimN)
BTW Starfux® etc - it would seem to me that your missing 70% of custom aren't exactly flocking back...who you going to blame this time?
Doyle?
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