Tag Archives: State of the World

Occupy Wall Street: What Do They Want?

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The corporate media sneers at the “punks and hippies” with “absolutely no purpose or focus in life” taking to the streets in NYC and dozens of other cities and ask ”What do they want?”

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

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As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

  • They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
  • They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
  • They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
  • They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
  • They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
  • They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
  • They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
  • They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
  • They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
  • They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
  • They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
  • They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
  • They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
  • They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
  • They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
  • They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
  • They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
  • They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
  • They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
  • They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
  • They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

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Naomi Klein and The Shock Doctrine

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If you follow the news, you know that the Bush administration is finally coming close to achieving its objective in Iraq. Thousands of US soldiers are dead. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead. Millions are displaced. The whole region is a volatile quagmire. But it was worth it, because Operation Iraqi Freedom has succeeded: we are finally going to get the oil. Just in time too, what with gas at $4 per gallon and all.

No-bid contracts are about to be handed over to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, Chevron and a number of smaller companies so that they can help “rebuild the decrepit Iraqi oil industry.” In exchange, they will receive premium access to one of the largest remaining oil deposits in the world. These foreign firms are positioned to keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts granted under the control of the Iraqi National Oil Company. As other global sources dwindle, this is going to lead to a cash-flow for the chosen few that will make last year’s record-setting profits laughable. Mission accomplished, he said.

Here’s how it went down. We went in for the oil. We destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, raided its coffers, despoiled priceless and ancient national treasures, illegally held and tortured detainees, killed people, decimated the economy, spawned a civil/religious war, alienated most of the world, and reduced the place to chaos. Then we handed out no-bid contracts (see a theme emerging?) to companies such as Haliburton and Bechtel with direct connections to the highest reaches of our government, funneling billions of US citizens’ dollars into a grossly negligent privatized reconstruction of Iraq. Now we want Iraq to pay for this “reconstruction” by handing over the oil.

Iraq is nearly destroyed, the American people were first lied to and then robbed blind, and a handful of multinational corporations are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams. You want to know what Iraq was really about? Take the advice Deep Throat gave during the Watergate scandal: follow the money.

That’s Iraq, but what I really want to talk about is Naomi Klein.

The mess in Iraq is just one the most recent and egregious examples of the consequences of what Naomi Klein calls “Disaster Capitalism”. Klein’s latest book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (a New York Times best seller) is now being released in paperback. It is the story of “how America’s free market policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.” Klein systematically takes us through a modern history of human catastrophe, war, and natural disaster and shows how multinational corporations in bed with political and economic free-market ideologues have seized advantage of crises to impose draconian economic policies on wounded populations, handing over to private companies the riches of the public sphere, and creating conditions advantageous to only the biggest global players, often with brutal repression of dissent. Russia, China, Central and South America, the South-East Asia crisis, South Africa, the tsunami, New Orleans, Guantanamo, Iraq… She covers it all. Disaster profiteering has become one of the most lucrative ventures available for those who are positioned to exploit a shocked and beaten populace. We, as Americans, need to understand how powerful interests play on our fears to garner support for international interventions in the name of national defense (i.e. the “war on terror”) that do little to secure us from harm, but do a lot to secure vast amounts of wealth for an elite few.

This, in my opinion, is one of the most important stories of our time. It’s scary as hell. Buy the book. Read it.

Visit The Shock Doctrine website to find out more.

Check out Audio and Video footage of Naomi speaking on top news and talk shows.
Watch her debate Alan Greenspan.

Read Naomi Klein’s latest (short) article in The Nation, in which she talks about the connections between disaster capitalism and the current food and fuel crises.

Update - A conversation between Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman concerning all of the above, and Obama’s true economic colors.

Free Speech in America

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Minneapolis, MN – I just spent the weekend at the National Conference for Media Reform that was held here in Minneapolis. If I ever had any doubt about the corporate media’s stranglehold on truth and it’s abuse of power for the sake of profit- all in the name of “journalism”- it was dispelled this weekend. And the most eloquent spokesperson revealing this sad reality was not one of the many intelligent, impassioned, and courageous people who addressed or attended the conference- it was none other than Bill O’Reilly. “Reporting” about the conference on his Fox “news” show, O’Reilly characterized the attendees as lunatics, crazies, and fascists. Fascists??!! The whole point of the conference was to reclaim democratic access to and ownership of the means of public communication, information, and debate- television, radio, cable/satellite, print, and especially the Internet- almost ALL of which is now owned and controlled by a grand total of 6 companies. If you believe you are receiving any semblance of objective journalism in the corporate media, you ought to take a closer look.

It matters. This is how we got into Iraq. This is how we allowed Bush to steal an election. This is why we care more about the next American Idol than we do about Darfur, Tibet, Afghanistan, the environment, our next-door neighbors…

Among the lunatics and fascists at the conference were Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Amy Goodman, Phil Donahue, Representative Mike Doyle, Senator Byron Dorgan, two current FCC commissioners, and many other incredibly thoughtful and motivated people who care deeply about this country and recognize that truly free speech is the foundation of any democracy worth the name. O’Reilly is either blatantly pursuing his own agenda at the expense of any pretense to truthfulness or he is truly one of the most ignorant people I have ever heard. It would be laughable, except that people believe him.

And that is the point.

This is serious folks. I think the most critical issues of our time are 1) the corporate/capitalist version of economic “growth” that is leading to the decimation of this planet’s ability to sustain life, 2) corporate control of the media, 3) the complicity of government with each. These are the foundational issues. Whatever other problems, injustices, causes that you are (rightly) concerned about, they can likely be traced back to one of these larger issues. In any case, your particular area of concern will never be sustainably resolved until we figure out first things first. Until we get the truth out about what is happening to our world, nothing will change. The truth is that the current system is designed to generate massive profits and power for an elite few at the expense of the earth and the majority of its inhabitants, and to keep the rest of the people either enslaved to poverty or anesthetized.

Who controls what gets said? Who has the power to determine the message? How are we to communicate with each other as free people without truly democratic, decentralized, truthful, locally-connected media? This is how we live together. The political economy and the media are the conduits through which our material and mental/emotional/spiritual lives flow. Who controls them controls our lives.

It’s time for change. And I ain’t talkin’ about Obama (although I hope he wins by the biggest landslide in American history this November). Wake up, folks (myself included). Stakes is high.

Head on over to freepress.net to listen to Moyer’s plenary address at the conference, to view video from other speakers such as Dan Rather and Amy Goodman, and to find out more about the critical need for media reform in this country.

The Orienting Question(s)

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Ely, Minnesota -I’ve been working through a book called How to Find the Work You Love by Laurence G. Boldt. It’s a great book, emphasizing the pursuit of a life that integrates work and meaning. He quotes Aristotle: “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” This simple sentence, Boldt says, tells you everything you need to know to find the work you love.

There are some exercises. One of the first is to formulate an orienting question that you can use to help shape your search for meaningful work. This should be a question that gets to the center of your own personal values, the heart of meaning. What are you looking for, really?

I’ve decided to post my Orienting Question(s) and the response I initially wrote (really a further elaboration of the question rather than an answer), because it brings up a lot of the issues I’ve been thinking and writing about lately. It’s a reflection of my own thought processes, an internal debate. It wasn’t really intended for an external audience. But here you go, anyway. Good Luck.

The Orienting Question(s):

  • How can I be most useful?
  • What am I willing to commit my life to?
  • What could I do with my remaining time, given my current lack of experience, limited capital, and personal emotional/mental limitations, to develop a calling that most effectively addresses the need for global sustainability, justice, and an equitable future for all people?
  • What could I do that would be of most benefit to all sentient beings?

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