from In These Times:


How the Government Targeted Occupy
A new report reveals that the U.S. spent millions of dollars spying on Occupiers and other anti-corporate activists.

BY Lisa Graves


Demonstrators take part in an Occupy Wall Street protest march in New York City's Financial District on September 26, 2011. (Paul Stein, Flickr/Creative Commons)


Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

In our new report, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” written by Center for Media and Democracy contributor and DBA Press publisher Beau Hodai, we detail several ways in which our tax dollars are being squandered on law enforcement—or so-called “homeland security”—personnel monitoring Americans who dare to voice dissent against the extraordinary influence that some of the world's most powerful corporations have on on our elected officials.

Through this investigation we have documented:

* How U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded “fusion center” personnel have spent endless hours gleefully monitoring their fellow Americans though Facebook and other social media, and how fusion centers nationwide have expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street, bank activists and civil libertarians concerned about national security powers.
* How some of these “counter terrorism” government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver's license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in the effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.
* How corporations have become part of the “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships—and how, through these partnerships, the homeland security apparatus has been focused on citizens protesting these corporations.

.............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15028/how_the_government_targeted_occupy/

SPARTANBURG, SC — A former USC Upstate track and field coach is accused of threatening a Spartanburg Herald-Journal reporter using lyrics from the Michael Jackson song “Smooth Criminal.”

Thirty-one-year-old Joseph Colton Hodge sent the reporter an email with a video attached of the man singing the Michael Jackson song, replacing the name “Annie” with the reporter’s name, according to an incident report from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. The original song contains lyrics in which the singer references harming a woman named “Annie.” Hodge was charged with second-degree harassment sending the video.

It wasn’t the first time Hodge had sent the reporter threatening emails and videos, according to the report. An editor at the paper told police that the reporter had received several similar messages several times in the past. ...........(more)

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/17/2775609/report-former-usc-upstate-coach.html#storylink=cpy

SPARTANBURG, SC — A former USC Upstate track and field coach is accused of threatening a Spartanburg Herald-Journal reporter using lyrics from the Michael Jackson song “Smooth Criminal.”

Thirty-one-year-old Joseph Colton Hodge sent the reporter an email with a video attached of the man singing the Michael Jackson song, replacing the name “Annie” with the reporter’s name, according to an incident report from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. The original song contains lyrics in which the singer references harming a woman named “Annie.” Hodge was charged with second-degree harassment sending the video.

It wasn’t the first time Hodge had sent the reporter threatening emails and videos, according to the report. An editor at the paper told police that the reporter had received several similar messages several times in the past. ...........(more)

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/17/2775609/report-former-usc-upstate-coach.html#storylink=cpy

A Reversion to a Dickensian Variety of Capitalism

By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates. Cross-posted from Triple Crisis.

Since her death, many eulogies of Thatcher have spoken of her as a revolutionary. Thatcherism (along with the associated Reaganomics) is seen as a radical transformative agenda that changed the face of economy and society. But seen from the developing world decades later, much of this agenda appears familiar, in the form of structural adjustment policies that have been forced upon different countries at different times by international institutions.

Given the broad contemporaneity of these strategies, it is a moot point who “inspired” whom, or just how original those ideas were. But it is certainly true that they contributed to shaping policy dialogue in fundamental ways, and thereby left a continuing (if unfortunate) legacy. Consider just five significant elements of this legacy, most features of which are now found across the world and especially in developing countries.

First, and possibly the most well-known: the attack on organised labour and the resulting drastic reduction in workers’ bargaining power. This occurred not just through the instrument of unemployment (or fear of it) used to discipline workers, but through regulation and legal changes as well as changing institutions. This is now an almost universal feature, except in societies such as in Latin America where recent political changes have generated some reversal.

Second, financial deregulation and significant increases in the lobbying and political power of financial agents. This has led to the massive expansion and then implosion of deregulated finance, with the crisis affecting the real economy in terrible ways. It has also contributed to deindustrialisation and the rentier economy. The UK today is clearly one, with its focus on the City of London as its most prominent “industry” – but this is increasingly the fate of countries that are much lower in the development and per capita income ladders. .....................(more)

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/a-reversion-to-a-dickensian-variety-of-capitalism.html#W6lfBiBu57JoklmV.99

from In These Times:


How the Government Targeted Occupy
A new report reveals that the U.S. spent millions of dollars spying on Occupiers and other anti-corporate activists.

BY Lisa Graves


Demonstrators take part in an Occupy Wall Street protest march in New York City's Financial District on September 26, 2011. (Paul Stein, Flickr/Creative Commons)


Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

In our new report, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” written by Center for Media and Democracy contributor and DBA Press publisher Beau Hodai, we detail several ways in which our tax dollars are being squandered on law enforcement—or so-called “homeland security”—personnel monitoring Americans who dare to voice dissent against the extraordinary influence that some of the world's most powerful corporations have on on our elected officials.

Through this investigation we have documented:

* How U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded “fusion center” personnel have spent endless hours gleefully monitoring their fellow Americans though Facebook and other social media, and how fusion centers nationwide have expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street, bank activists and civil libertarians concerned about national security powers.
* How some of these “counter terrorism” government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver's license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in the effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.
* How corporations have become part of the “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships—and how, through these partnerships, the homeland security apparatus has been focused on citizens protesting these corporations.

.............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15028/how_the_government_targeted_occupy/

To Desire to Make Capitalism Moral Is, in Reality, to Demand Its Suppression

Sunday, 19 May 2013 11:15
By Yvon Quiniou, L'Humanite in English | Op-Ed


Moralizing capitalism, what does this mean and is it conceivable?

(Original French Article: Vouloir le rendre moral, c’est, en réalité, exiger sa suppression; translated Wednesday 15 May 2013, by Leopold O’Shea).


The demand to moralize capitalism emerged in public debate, ironically, during Nicholas Sarkozy’s term of office, while he himself was embarking on ultra-free-market policy laden with scandalous human consequences. Its expression however is sapped by a strange contradiction, which manifests its limitations from the start. This contradiction presupposes that there is indeed something immoral in capitalism, since it would not need to be moralized otherwise. And at the same time, and for the same reason, it implies that such a moralization is possible: one does not demand what cannot be done, and at the horizon of this is the idea that a more moral capitalism is perfectly conceivable. I want to untangle this contradiction and denounce this imposture.

The contradiction stems from what is conceived of as immoral in the functioning of this system: the excesses of certain agents like traders, the unbelievable salaries of company heads or the acts of bosses now characterized as criminal, in short the behavior of certain individuals one can isolate from the system while leaving it intact, the reduction of the former thus allowing a return to the normal functioning of the latter, to which full consent is otherwise given. The limits of this attitude, which is seductive if one isn’t vigilant, are visible from the start: capitalism is criticized morally, but only at the margins, in some of its aspects, not in its essence. At this level it is considered as good for man and as serving his interests. Conclusion: if we confront these particular slip-ups, it can be made moral again.

This is a theoretic imposture. To see it, a return to Marx’s understanding of capitalist economy must be undertaken. The latter is not a set of objective processes, comparable to natural ones, and independent of man — in which case it would not, in fact, be strictly moral but amoral, escaping moral judgment, as the 20th century free market theoretician Hayek strongly maintained, for whom only the actions of an individual can be characterized as just or unjust, not a whole social system intended by no one; on the contrary, it is a set of practices by which certain people act in relation to other people in the field of the production of wealth: by buying their workforce, by paying them, by deciding on their working hours and the forms that these take, and, if need be, by making them redundant, etc. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16461-to-desire-to-make-capitalism-moral-is-in-reality-to-demand-its-suppression

To Desire to Make Capitalism Moral Is, in Reality, to Demand Its Suppression

Sunday, 19 May 2013 11:15
By Yvon Quiniou, L'Humanite in English | Op-Ed


Moralizing capitalism, what does this mean and is it conceivable?

(Original French Article: Vouloir le rendre moral, c’est, en réalité, exiger sa suppression; translated Wednesday 15 May 2013, by Leopold O’Shea).


The demand to moralize capitalism emerged in public debate, ironically, during Nicholas Sarkozy’s term of office, while he himself was embarking on ultra-free-market policy laden with scandalous human consequences. Its expression however is sapped by a strange contradiction, which manifests its limitations from the start. This contradiction presupposes that there is indeed something immoral in capitalism, since it would not need to be moralized otherwise. And at the same time, and for the same reason, it implies that such a moralization is possible: one does not demand what cannot be done, and at the horizon of this is the idea that a more moral capitalism is perfectly conceivable. I want to untangle this contradiction and denounce this imposture.

The contradiction stems from what is conceived of as immoral in the functioning of this system: the excesses of certain agents like traders, the unbelievable salaries of company heads or the acts of bosses now characterized as criminal, in short the behavior of certain individuals one can isolate from the system while leaving it intact, the reduction of the former thus allowing a return to the normal functioning of the latter, to which full consent is otherwise given. The limits of this attitude, which is seductive if one isn’t vigilant, are visible from the start: capitalism is criticized morally, but only at the margins, in some of its aspects, not in its essence. At this level it is considered as good for man and as serving his interests. Conclusion: if we confront these particular slip-ups, it can be made moral again.

This is a theoretic imposture. To see it, a return to Marx’s understanding of capitalist economy must be undertaken. The latter is not a set of objective processes, comparable to natural ones, and independent of man — in which case it would not, in fact, be strictly moral but amoral, escaping moral judgment, as the 20th century free market theoretician Hayek strongly maintained, for whom only the actions of an individual can be characterized as just or unjust, not a whole social system intended by no one; on the contrary, it is a set of practices by which certain people act in relation to other people in the field of the production of wealth: by buying their workforce, by paying them, by deciding on their working hours and the forms that these take, and, if need be, by making them redundant, etc. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16461-to-desire-to-make-capitalism-moral-is-in-reality-to-demand-its-suppression

from truthout:



As the recession that began in late 2007 drags through its sixth year, people are finally starting to ask if maybe inequality is to blame. After all, slow growth throughout the 2000s was associated with rising inequality, and inequality today is greater than it has ever been. Perhaps America’s falling growth rates and rising poverty rates share a single cause: inequality.

Not everyone would be surprised by this question. Marxist economists have long argued that capitalism will collapse due to rising inequality. Their argument in a nutshell is that inequality will rise to the point where workers can no longer afford to buy the products they are producing. With no customers, the economy will stagnate, leading to crisis and collapse.

Many orthodox economists also argue that inequality is bad for growth. High inequality encourages rent-seeking: it becomes more profitable to make money by moving to a higher-paid position in the economy than by increasing one’s own productivity. So for example industrial firms invest in finance, because that’s where the big rewards are. A few individuals get rich while the economy as a whole stalls.

There are many other variations on the idea that inequality is bad for growth. Of course, there also exist unreconstructed neoliberals who cling to the notion that inequality is good for growth. Despite all the evidence of the last forty years they still argue that inequality creates incentives that encourage people to work harder and be more productive. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16469-why-inequality-is-a-problem-and-growth-a-red-herring

Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel's Neoliberal Savagery

Monday, 20 May 2013 10:16
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed



Protesters march in the Loop March 27, 2013 during a rally to protest the proposed closing of 54 Chicago public schools.Protesters march in the Loop March 27, 2013 during a rally to protest the proposed closing of 54 Chicago public schools. (Photo: WBEZ/Robin Amer)


Across the globe, predatory capitalism spreads its gospel of power, greed, commodification, gentrification and inequality. Through the combined forces of a market driven ideology, policy and mode of governance, the apostles of free-market capitalism are doing their best to dismantle historically guaranteed social provisions provided by the welfare state, define the accumulation of capital as the only obligation of democracy, increase the role of corporate money in politics, wage an assault on unions, expand the military-security state, increase inequalities in wealth and income, foster the erosion of civil liberties and undercut public faith in the defining institutions of democracy.1. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish - from public schools to health-care centers - there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values and the common good. One does not have to look too far to see what happens in America’s neoliberal educational culture to see how ruthlessly the inequality of wealth, income and power bears down on those young people and brave teachers who are struggling every day to save the schools, unions and modes of pedagogy that offer hope at a time when schools have become just another commodity, students are reduced to clients or disposable populations, and teachers and their unions are demonized.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s current attempt to close down 54 public schools largely inhabited by poor minorities is one more example of a savage, racist neoliberal system at work that uses the politics of austerity and consolidation to further disenfranchise the unskilled young of the inner city. The hidden curriculum in this instance is not so invisible. Closing schools will result in massive layoffs, weakening the teachers unions. It will free up land that can be gentrified to attract middle-class voters, and it will once again prove that poor minority students, regardless of the hardships, if not danger, they will face as a result of such closings, are viewed as disposable - human waste to be relegated to the zones of terminal exclusion. Not only are many teachers and parents concerned about displacing thousands of students to schools that do not offer any hope of educational improvement, but they are also concerned about the safety of the displaced children, many of whom "will have to walk through violent neighborhoods and go to school with other students who are considered enemies." 2. This is not simply misguided policy, it is a racist script that makes clear that poor black youth are disposable and that their safety is irrelevant. How else to explain the mayor's plan to produce a Safe Passage Plan in which firefighters would be asked to patrol the new routes, even though they have made it clear that they are not trained for this type of special duty. That many of these children are poor black children trapped in under-resourced schools appears irrelevant to a mayor who takes his lead from politicians such as Barack Obama and Arnie Duncan, two educators who have simply reproduced the Bush educational reform playbook, i.e., more testing, demonize teachers, weaken unions, advocate for choice and charter schools, and turn public schools over to corporate hedge-fund managers and billionaires such as Bill Gates. Emanuel’s passionate zeal to downsize schools in impoverished black neighborhoods is matched only by his misdirected enthusiasm to lay out $195 million "on a basketball arena for DePaul University, a private Chicago university." 3.

Emanuel’s policies are symptomatic of a much larger war against teachers, public goods and the social contract. We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of "choice" and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands and a growing machinery of social death and culture of cruelty. 4. As power becomes global and is removed from local and nation-based politics, more and more individuals and groups are being defined by a free-floating class of ultra-rich and corporate power brokers as disposable, redundant, and irrelevant. Consequently, there are a growing number of people, especially young people, who increasingly inhabit zones of hardship, suffering and terminal exclusion. Power has lost its moorings in democratic institutions and removes itself from any sense of social, civic and political responsibilities. Mayor Emanuel, along with his neoliberal political allies, occupies the dead zone of capitalism - a zone marked by a ruthless indifference to the suffering of others and self-righteous coldness that makes human beings superfluous and unwanted. At the same time, this zone of capital accumulation and dispossession destroys those public spheres and collective structures such as public and higher education that are capable of resisting the logic of the pure market and the anti-democratic pressures it imposes on American society. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery

from truthdig:


Tumblr Is Worth $1.1 Billion to Yahoo For One Reason: You

Posted on May 20, 2013
By Robert Scheer


I have nothing against the folks who created Tumblr and managed to get Yahoo to bid a whopping $1.1 billion this week to buy the company. More power to them, I thought as I attended the event they helped sponsor Monday night for winners of this year’s Webby Awards, one of which—best political site—went to Truthdig, the online news magazine I proudly edit.

But as I mingled with my fellow honorees, there was a pang of concern that I would like to think is not driven by jealousy. Sites like ours, even when they are hooked to established news organizations, are starved for funding to pay for the journalism they provide. Others do spectacularly well, less because of the eyeballs they attract than for the personal information their readers freely give up that is desired by potential advertisers.

That is the appeal of Tumblr, a 6-year-old social blogging service that has yet to earn much money because it has shunned advertising, thereby gaining the trust of its users who willingly share massive amounts of private data. Tumblr’s CEO told the Los Angeles Times in 2010 that he was “pretty opposed to advertising,” but Yahoo undoubtedly has other plans.

“Yahoo believes it could help Tumblr bring in more money by selling ads—boosting its own revenue in the process,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Yahoo insiders. The model is one of data mining, exploiting the naive surrender of personal privacy so common on the Internet to better target advertising. As the Journal summarized it: “Data is at the heart of Yahoo’s ability to sell online advertising across its sites, based on what it knows about its people’s interests.” ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_is_tumblr_worth_11_billion_to_yahoo_you_20130521/