[LAAMN] A War Worth Fighting (what OWS is all about)
A War Worth Fighting by E.R. Bills / October 6th, 2011 My father grew up on Gordon Avenue on the South Side of Fort Worth. After high school at Trimble Tech, he apprenticed in the construction industry and became a journeyman electrician. In the 1970s he earned an average of $40,000 a year. It was a fair wage, a good wage. The average price for a new home was $50,000. The average price of new car was $4,500. Gas was 57 cents a gallon. A bottle of soda pop ran 35 cents, and you could get 5 or 10 cents back if you returned the bottle. Being as an electrician was a great way to make a living. Today, the average journeyman electrician still makes approximately $40,000 a year, but the average price for a new home is $100,000 and the typical price for a new car is $20,000. Gas is about $3 a gallon and soda pop is $1.75 a bottle. Working as an electrician is no longer a great way to make a living. The wages for many of the blue-collar, middle-class jobs in construction, manufacturing, and the service industries haven’t changed much in the last 40 years, but the prices for what they build, produce and service have tripled and quadrupled. Why does everything cost so much more even though the folks who are doing most of the actual work don’t make any more than they did 40 years ago? Well, it’s obviously complicated. The price of the materials has risen along with cost of the fuel required to transport goods. Then there are higher insurance costs and, in some cases, pension plans. But a significant percentage of the increase of the costs of products, goods and services in general can be traced to folks who do very little if any of the actual work. I call them the CEO or MBA class. While wages for so many of us have remained stagnant, theirs have increased by a thousand or even more. Where they used to earn 10 times what the average man or woman on the line or in the field used to earn, many of the fat cats now make hundreds of times what that worker earns. And their salaries continue to increase as they break up unions or ship our jobs overseas. The well-heeled apologists for these new robber barons would have us believe that middle-class unions and blue-collar collective bargaining rights are the reason the price of everything except our wages has gone up—but the real reason is the class they serve. Corporations have to pay our executioners—I mean their executives—well. Their steely lack of conscience is invaluable. They keep boards of directors happy and don’t let common decency or antiquated notions of loyalty, shared struggle, or fair play get in the way of the bottom line. It no longer pays to be a craftsman; it’s more important to be crafty. Pride in your work isn’t profitable; quantity trumps quality. Every Wal-Mart in America is a testament to middle-class expendability. Where there were once millions of mom-and-pop shops where the employees knew your name, there are now thousands of big-box shops where Mom and Pop earn minimum wage as “greeters.” The individual items we buy there are cheaper but our collective quality of life is also greatly cheapened. Tomorrow, you and I will be earning the same or less while the CEO/MBA class steals more. Their kids will coast through the finest private schools and expensive universities while ours will be lucky to graduate from intentionally understaffed public schools and even luckier to struggle through the only colleges we can afford. How long will the sparsely privileged meekly accept the world according to the agents of their own disfranchisement? How much longer can we afford to elect these upper-class lackeys? What’s it going to take to stop us from kissing the hands that slap us? The Republicans of late have taken to accusing President Obama of class warfare. Can they not see that the middle class has been suffering in the trenches of class warfare for years? Any CEO who makes hundreds of times more than the man or woman doing the real work has middle-class blood on his or her hands. Any CEO who allows manufacturing jobs to be shipped overseas is spilling blue-collar entrails. And every big-box store that monopolizes Middle America digs a thousand blue-collar graves. Class warfare has been waged against the middle class for years. It’s time our assailants faced the consequences. E.R. Bills is a writer from Ft Worth, Texas. His recent works appear in Fort Worth Weekly, South Texas Nation, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth Magazine, etc. He can be reached at: erbillsthi...@gmail.com. Read other articles by E.R.. http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/10/a-war-worth-fighting/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com
[LAAMN] 10.7 OWS Report: Resistance to 10 Years of U.S. War on Afghanistan
PLEASE FORWARD AND REPOST WIDELY NYC Labor Against the War 10.7 Occupy Wall Street Report: Resistance to 10 Years of U.S. War on Afghanistan [OCCUPY-DC-PROTEST.jpg] OWS NYC OWS Live http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution The Occupy Wall Street Press http://www.paper.li/occupymanhattan/1317517749 http://www.paper.li/occupymanhattan/1317517749 Occupy Wall Street Media âPLEASE KEEP CONTRIBUTING! We don't have billions like FOX News nor are we bankrolled by the Koch brothers. We only have YOU! You have our tremendous gratitude, but this money will only pay for two issues. The more money we get, the more newspapers, posters, stickers and flyers we can print to get out the voice of the 99%! Please keep contributing and encouraging all your friends, family and colleagues to do likewise! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/610964639/occupy-wall-street-media http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/610964639/occupy-wall-street-media Occupy Wall Street protesters brutalised New York police are asked who they are protecting, then proceed to beat, pepper spray, and arrest protestors. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/10/201110781816308874\ .html http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/10/20111078181630887\ 4.html Why the police aren't on our side In cities like New York, which is majority non-white with a police force that routinely beats, frames, and kills people of color, our allies are people who have been targeted by police, not the police themselves. The aim of any movement against economic inequality must take into account the role of racism plays in capitalism. To become more inclusive of communities struggling against oppression, where the police play a repressive role ever day, reaching out to the NYPD is exactly the wrong direction to go. http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/06/why-police-arent-on-our-side http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/06/why-police-arent-on-our-side Labor Throws Weight Behind Wall Street Occupation | Labor Notes We endorsed Occupy Wall Street because we agreed with 99 percent of what the protesters were saying, said Marvin Holland, director of community action for the union, which represents 38,000 bus and train system workers. They're 100 percent right that banks caused this problem. We've had rank-and-file members of TWU Local 100 there since day one. http://labornotes.org/2011/10/labor-throws-weight-wall-street-occupation http://labornotes.org/2011/10/labor-throws-weight-wall-street-occupatio\ n Wall Street as Public Enemy Number One | Black Agenda Report They are very young, very white, and largely inexperienced in organizing. But the Occupy Wall Street crew has picked the right target: finance capitalists, the class that is the common enemy of the human race. In that sense, the Zuccotti Park campers are eons ahead of the faux radicals and `progressives' who, in terror of the Tea Party and Republican presidential clown candidates, will soon return to the Obamite fold in their eternal search for lesser evils. Obama was, and will remain, the candidate of Wall Street. http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/wall-street-public-enemy-number\ -one http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/wall-street-public-enemy-numbe\ r-one Roberto Lovato: Our Berlin Wall Is Breaking': Taking on Wall Street's Dictatorship The history of the future will record how the Occupy Wall Street movement began informally after many of us stood by and watched as the great martyr of our times, Citizen Troy Davis, was denied his fundamental rights, was denied life itself; Historians will document how we watched and grew in anger as Corporate Citizens like the GEO group and other prison construction firms that profit from warehousing Davis and other Death Row inmates suck up all the rights of our citizenship -- and none of the responsibility. http://www.alternet.org/vision/152631/%27our_berlin_wall_is_breaking%27%\ 3A_taking_on_wall_street%27s_dictatorship/ http://www.alternet.org/vision/152631/%27our_berlin_wall_is_breaking%27\ %3A_taking_on_wall_street%27s_dictatorship/ Confronting the Malefactors When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefa\ ctors.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malef\ actors.html RESISTANCE TO 10 YEARS OF U.S. WAR ON AFGHANISTAN Attacks Rock U.S. Outposts Near Afghanistan-Pakistan Border While the American soldiers organized and coordinated their part of the battle on the outpost here, the Afghan soldiers did not participate. Some simply sat and watched. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/world/asia/attacks-rock-us-outposts-ne\ ar-afghanistan-pakistan-border.html?_r=2hp
[LAAMN] Fw: Economic Justice L.A. @ Occupy L.A. Sat 10/8
- Forwarded Message - From: Diana Montez dnmon...@yahoo.com To: la...@egroups.com la...@egroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:48 AM Subject: Economic Justice L.A. @ Occupy L.A. Sat 10/8 If you believe in taxing the rich, ending state budget cuts and an economy that puts people before profit, Economic Justice L.A. is working to change the laws to make some of those slogans a reality. Talk with members of at Economic Justice L.A. Occupy L.A. tomorrow,starting at 10am on the City Hall Lawn. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [LAAMN] Cartoon
Mike, You keep sending cartoons to this site, which strips all graphics. Do you read this site? Scott [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Financial Polization and Corruption: Obama's Politics of Deception
Financial Polarization and Corruption: Obama’s Politics of Deception Don’t Let Him Get Away With It... by Prof. Michael Hudson The seeds for President Obama’s demagogic press conference on Thursday were planted last summer when he assigned his right-wing Committee of 13 the role of resolving the obvious and inevitable Congressional budget standoff by forging an anti-labor policy that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and uses the savings to bail out banks from even more loans that will go bad as a result of the IMF-style austerity program that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed to back. The problem facing Mr. Obama is obvious enough: How can he hold the support of moderates and independents (or as Fox News calls them, socialists and anti-capitalists), students and labor, minorities and others who campaigned so heavily for him in 2008? He has double-crossed them – smoothly, with a gentle smile and patronizing patter talk, but with an iron determination to hand federal monetary and tax policy over to his largest campaign contributors: Wall Street and assorted special interests – the Democratic Party’s Rubinomics and Clintonomics core operators, plus smooth Bush Administration holdovers such as Tim Geithner, not to mention quasi-Cheney factotums in the Justice Department. President Obama’s solution has been to do what any political demagogue does: Come out with loud populist campaign speeches that have no chance of becoming the law of the land, while quietly giving his campaign contributors what they’ve paid him for: giveaways to Wall Street, tax cuts for the wealthy (euphemized as tax “exemptions” and mark-to-model accounting, plus an agreement to count their income as “capital gains” taxed at a much lower rate). So here’s the deal the Democratic leadership has made with the Republicans. The Republicans will run someone from their present gamut of guaranteed losers, enabling Mr. Obama to run as the “voice of reason,” as if this somehow is Middle America. This will throw the 2012 election his way for a second term if he adopts their program – a set of rules paid for by the leading campaign contributors to both parties. President Obama’s policies have not been the voice of reason. They are even further to the right than George W. Bush could have achieved. At least a Republican president would have confronted a Democratic Congress blocking the kind of program that Mr. Obama has rammed through. But the Democrats seem stymied when it comes to standing up to a president who ran as a Democrat rather than the Tea Partier he seems to be so close to in his ideology. So here’s where the Committee of 13 comes into play. Given (1) the agreement that if the Republicans and Democrats do NOT agree on Mr. Obama’s dead-on-arrival “job-creation” ploy, and (2) Republican House Leader Boehner’s statement that his party will reject the populist rhetoric that President Obama is voicing these days, then (3) the Committee will get its chance to wield its ax and cut federal social spending in keeping with its professed ideology. President Obama signaled this long in advance, at the outset of his administration when he appointed his Deficit Reduction Commission headed by former Republican Sen. Simpson and Rubinomics advisor to the Clinton administration Bowles to recommend how to cut federal social spending while giving even more money away to Wall Street. He confirmed suspicions of a sellout by reappointing bank lobbyist Tim Geithner to the Treasury, and tunnel-visioned Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve Board. Yet on Wednesday, October 4, the president tried to represent the OccupyWallStreet movement as support for his efforts. He pretended to endorse a pro-consumer regulator to limit bank fraud, as if he had not dumped Elizabeth Warren on the advice of Mr. Geithner – who seems to be settling into the role of bagman for campaign contributors from Wall Street. Can President Obama get away with it? Can he jump in front of the parade and represent himself as a friend of labor and consumers while his appointees support Wall Street and his Committee of 13 is waiting in the wings to perform its designated function of guillotining Social Security? When I visited the OccupyWallStreet site on Wednesday, it was clear that the disgust with the political system went so deep that there is no single set of demands that can fix a system so fundamentally broken and dysfunctional. One can’t paste-up a regime that is impoverishing the economy, accelerating foreclosures, pushing state and city budgets further into deficit, and forcing cuts in social spending. The situation is much like that from Iceland to Greece: Governments no longer represent the people. They represent predatory financial interests that are impoverishing the economy. This is not democracy. It is financial oligarchy. And oligarchies do not give their victims a voice. So
[LAAMN] Economic Justice L.A. @ Occupy L.A. Sat 10/8
If you believe in taxing the rich, ending state budget cuts and an economy that puts people before profit, Economic Justice L.A. is working to change the laws to make some of those slogans a reality. Talk with members of at Economic Justice L.A. Occupy L.A. tomorrow,starting at 10am on the City Hall Lawn. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] McReynolds: A perfect pattern for a social movement, Borosage: The Moral Clarity of Occupy Wall Street, Videos
Video... Voices from Occupy Wall Street: 'We're Fighting for Society Where Everybody is Important' http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/07-0 blocked::http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/07-0 Unions Unify Occupy Wall Street http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/07 blocked::http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/07 - Original Message - From: David McReynolds mailto:dmcreyno...@nyc.rr.com To: sphist...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2011 3:00 AM Subject: Re: [SPHistory] Then and now David, I'd watched with fascination the various events where people gathered in Grand Central or a market, to sing an opera, or otherwise astonish people. It seemed to me a perfect pattern for a social movement. For the Wall Street Occupation. Things come in waves. The forms may be different, but there are long periods when people ask what happened to the left and then things happen. In the 1960's people (the media, etc.) said these things remind us of the 1930's. Then in the 1980's people would say that demonstrations reminded them of the 1960's. I'm not an expert,simply offering my view that we always forget that history has always been a series of waves of energy. (Think of 1968 - Paris, the storming of the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, the Prague Spring). Or go back a bit earlier to the 1950's and the sudden spread of the beat generation (yes, that was made possible in part because the society was prosperous, the kids had no memory of the depression, and it made sense, in the face of the profound disillusionment of the post war period when we changed enemies so easily - Germany an enemy then a friend, Japan a friend then an enemy then a friend, China a friend, then a foe, Russia a foe, then a friend, then a foe. Combined with the unique reality of the awareness of the atomic age - for the first time in human history the future was exitable. My hunch is that, as with the Tea Party (which had the advantage of a whole network of its own and millions of dollars pumped into it), this movement will have electoral repercussions. Social change has never started in the political field. It always begins outside the established norms. The Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam Peace movement, the Womens movement, the Gay Liberation movement --- all, without exception, emerged outside the political establishment but without exception the existing political forms sought to co-opt these movements and represent them. This movement has new forms (the whole business of cell phones, etc.) but I expect it will attract the attention of the politicians. In a sense, one has to ask why did it take so long? The corruption is so profound, the reality of the political world being controlled by Wall Street so obvious, the documentation of how this happened - in books, in films, etc. so total, that we have to ask not why now but but did people wait so long. We still have two terribly pointless, unnecessary wars going on, which clearly have as their sole purpose providing enormous profits to military-linked corporations. David McReynolds * * * http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011104007/whose-side-are-you-moral-clar ity-occupy-wall-street Whose Side Are You On: The Moral Clarity of Occupy Wall Street By Robert Borosage http://www.ourfuture.org/users/robert-borosage October 7, 2011 - 2:21pm ET Once Occupy Wall Street demonstrations started to sweep across America, the mainstream media began to pay attention -- and sounded a chorus of criticism. The movement was disorganized; it had no agenda. It wasn't organized like the Tea Party. Fox News trotted out ace reporter Geraldo Rivera -- really -- to charge that European anarchists, paid illegal aliens, and out and out leftists were behind the innocent kids. Herman Cain led disapproving Republicans, calling http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/herman-cain-occupy-wall-street_n_9 98092.html the movement un-American, when he should have been celebrating what it was doing for pizza sales. Virtually everything said about this movement is wrong. Stand back; take a clear look. Every politician should understand one thing: this is coming at you and you must decide. Whose side are you on? 1. Moral clarity Occupy Wall Street has no policy agenda, but it has utter moral clarity. The demonstrators have built an island of democracy in the belly of Wall Street. The bankers looking down on them would be on the street had not taxpayers bailed them out. And now they are confronted with students sinking under student debt with no jobs, homeowners who are underwater and can't find mortgage relief, workers desperate for work. No one is confused about the message. Wall Street got bailed out; Main Street was abandoned. The top 1% rigs the rules and pockets the rewards. And 99% get sent the bill for the party they weren't even invited to. 2. Non violent discipline That moral clarity was dramatized when the demonstrators stayed
[LAAMN] The Poverty Tour Townhall with Tavis Smiley Cornel West ~ Sunday, October 9th, 5:00 PM ~ At Wilshire Boulevard Temple in LA ~ Event Is Free Open to the Public!
THE POVERTY TOUR TOWNHALL With TAVIS SMILEY CORNEL WEST Sunday, October 9th, 5:00 PM Wilshire Boulevard Temple 3663 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles 90010 Doors Open at 4:00 PM Event Is Free Open to the Public! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Class Warfare Indeed by Michael Parenti
Class Warfare Indeed by Michael Parenti http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/02-0 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!
Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! Stories of Crime, Love and Rebellion Book Launch Party, Saturday, October 15, 2-4 PM at the Southern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. From the war-torn streets of Paris to the Black Panthers putting the Man against the wall in Oakland, from the sins of the past perpetrated by the bosses to modern-day Bolsheviks looking to even the score, to plotting old timers and youngsters jacked to the ‘net like a test lab monkey, Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! Stories of Crime, Love and Rebellion from PM Press ’ Switchblade imprint is an incendiary mix of original and out-of-print short stories from the past, present and fearful future about the fight for a better world. Visionary writers such as Sara Paretsky, Paco Taibo, Michael Moorcock, Kim Stanley Robinson and Summer Brenner have contributed powerful tales of the various ways people have risen up to challenge the status quo, and change-up the relationships of power. Please join contributing writers Penny Mickelbury, John A Imani, Larry Fondation and co-editor and contributor Gary Phillips on Saturday, October 15, 2-4 PM at the Southern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont Ave., L.A., CA 90044 for a book launch where they will discuss their work and read brief excerpts from their new stories in this volatile collection. Come on and get your grind on. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] IMF: Global Financial Meltdown Ahead
IMF Advisor Robert Shapiro: Prepare for Global Financial Meltdown Within Two to Three Weeks The fact that money-industry insiders are finding it in their hearts to tell the truth is actually more frightening than heart-warming, but here we go again: the BBC has interviewed IMF Advisor Robert Shapiro about the pending disaster in the European economy. If they can't get it together, he says, we're looking at a global disaster worse than the one in 2008: If they cannot address it in a credible way I believe within perhaps two to three weeks we will have a meltdown in sovereign debt which will produce a meltdown across the European banking system. We are not just talking about a relatively small Belgian bank, we are talking about the largest banks in the world, the largest banks in Germany, the largest banks in France, that will spread to the United Kingdom, it will spread everywhere because the global financial system is so interconnected. All those banks are counterparties to every significant bank in the United States, and in Britain, and in Japan, and around the world. He then says the wildcard, at least for the United States, lies in credit default swaps, and how vulnerable British banks are to Ireland's debt problem. Either way, it sounds pretty dire. Watch below, via ZeroHedge: By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | Sourced from AlterNet Posted at October 7, 2011, 6:42 am http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/676950/imf_advisor_robert_shapiro%3A_prepare_for_global_financial_meltdown_within_two_to_three_weeks/#paragraph4 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Stockbrokers More Dangerous than Psychopaths
Study: Wealthy Stockbrokers More Dangerous Than Psychopaths The findings are a reminder of why now -- more than ever -- we must refuse to succumb to political apathy and laissez-faire demagoguery. October 6, 2011 | Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy. And not just run-of-the-mill crazy, a la George Costanza's parents, but the kind of crazy that makes films like Silence of the Lambs and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so frightening. The good news for you is that you aren't insane for thinking this. The bad news for all of us, though, is that according to two new scientific analyses, you are more correct in your assessment than you may know. The first revelation came from Dr. Nassir Ghaemi of Tufts University. In his recent book, A First-Rate Madness, he went beyond merely restating the old adage that anyone crazy enough to run for public office probably shouldn't occupy that office. Instead, the book sheds light on what Ghaemi calls an inverse law of sanity, whereby tumultuous times like these actually reward and promote political figures who are mentally abnormal (or) even ill. Now comes a new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen showing that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths. As the website Newser reported, the researchers pitted a group of stockbrokers against a group of actual psychopaths in various computer simulations and intelligence tests and found that the money men were significantly more reckless, competitive, and manipulative. Even more striking, the researchers note that achieving overall success was less important to the stock speculators than the sadistic drive to damage their opponents. The findings build on similar research in the recent past. In 1996, investigators at Glasgow Caledonian University discovered connections between psychopathy and successful financial speculation, concluding that with the right parenting, (psychopaths) can become successful stockbrokers instead of serial killers. Likewise, in 2004, researchers at the University of British Columbia reacted to similar findings and created a test to help firms detect corporate psychopaths within their ranks. That same year, the award winning-documentary The Corporation used World Health Organization metrics to show that if companies really are people, as our Supreme Court insists, then many of them are mentally ill. Obviously, these results reflect the not-so-surprising fact that the extreme nature of the modern political process and of today's casino economy inherently self-select for certain kinds of traits. And no doubt, wholly changing that dynamic may be impossible or undesirable -- or both. However, the findings are a reminder of why now -- more than ever -- we must refuse to succumb to political apathy and laissez-faire demagoguery. Indeed, it’s time to redouble our commitment to strengthening checks on political and corporate power because that power is often being wielded by the most unstable among us. So what does that mean in practice? It means that when we see a wild-eyed White House ignore the constitution and claim the despotic right to assassinate American citizens without criminal charge, we demand that Congress stop the madness -- rather than quietly acquiesce. It means that when we see a spontaneous grassroots movement physically occupy Lower Manhattan and challenge banks' deranged rapaciousness, we applaud the effort as long overdue -- rather than scoff at it as unrealistic. It means, in short, that we refuse to stay silent in the face of insanity. And frankly, if we have scientific proof that the inmates are running the Wall Street and Washington asylums, this is the least we should do -- and we really should do a whole lot more. David Sirota is best-selling author of the new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. Email him at d...@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at DavidSirota.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books Hostile Takeover and The Uprising. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at d...@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota. http://www.alternet.org/story/152639/study%3A_wealthy_stockbrokers_more_dangerous_than_psychopaths?page=entire [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
[LAAMN] Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!
***/Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!/* Cover of Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail *Book Launch Party **Saturday, October 15, 2 p.m.* @ The Southern California Library 6120 S. Vermont Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90044 www.socallib.org . (323) 759-6063, x15 /*Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! Stories of Crime, Love, and Rebellion */features original and once out-of-print short stories from the past, present and fearful future about the fight for a better world. The collection's visionary writers have contributed powerful tales of the various ways people have risen up to challenge the status quo, and change-up the relationships of power. Please join co-editor/contributor Gary Phillips and contributing writers Penny Mickelbury, John A. Imani, and Larry Fondation at the Southern California Library on Saturday, October 15, 2-4 p.m. //for a book launch where they will discuss their work and read brief excerpts from their new stories in this collection of noir, science fiction, revolution, and mayhem. SCL logo /Where Making History Is a Struggle / [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
