TIME Magazine chose the Protester as 2011 person of the year. This was the year of people’s uprising. All around the globe, the legitimacy of governance was questioned and challenged. The critical agents for a new civil society are on the rise. It is not about a single person, group or ideology, but the empowerment of ordinary people around the world; Egyptians and Tunisians who risk their lives for the betterment of society; Occupiers in New York going viral around the globe and hackers, free information advocates, online collectives like Anonymous and LulzSec, tirelessly working to bring checks and balance to the corruption of power.
A once apathetic and cynical youth is rising to the occasion. The civic arena that has been taken over by commercial interests is bypassed by a growing segment of the populace in favor of this new model that moves beyond the nation-state and the facade of modern representative Democracy.
The Arab Spring was noted as being a social media-led revolution. Anonymous is a model of social creativity that is a phenomenon of individual action in union (or legion, as they would say) around a shared idea. Occupiers swarm cities together through the uniting values of the 99%. The protagonists of this blossoming crowd-sourced civic life are claiming power as active agents in their own lives. This new movement reminds me of the complex social organization of the bees.
Ms Marsh wrote this proposal on the 24th of December, regarding her thoughts on the organisation of political and economic systems "post-NDAA", or National Defence Authorisation Act. As a brief aside, the NDAA is the US military's appropriations bill, but with benefits. It allows for indefinite military detainment, and the converting of the United States proper into a 'front' in the 'Global War on Terror'.
In my opinion, the core of Ms Marsh's proposal is a reaction to the problem of centralisation. This problem takes many forms, but for my purposes I believe Ms Marsh was focused on just two facets: Economy and political centralisation. An example of each facet, respectively, is global corporate Capitalism and the nation-state.
Reading Ms Marsh propose with this in mind, I think, lends greater weight to her critique and solutions. The adage of 'live local, think global' comes to mind. In essence, the predominance of economic and political organisation will occur within only about two or three degrees of separation, in context of affinity groups of such a size which are capable of providing self-oversight.
Here we run head-long into the nation-state and its wealth of problems. A small piece of semantics, however, as this is a term which needs to be brought back to its true definition: A State composed of one Nation, as in a group of people who share a common identity. Hence the concept of 'national identity', as part of the defining characteristic of a nation-state.
"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson
Earlier this month, a group within the Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) published a draft of the 99 Percent Declaration, which proposes solutions to economic inequality in the U.S. and announces a plan to organize a national convention to be held in Philadelphia on July 4, 2012. Still a work-in-progress, the Declaration calls for the election of delegates who would draft and vote on a non-partisan petition of grievances to be presented to the U.S. President, each member of Congress, the Supreme Court, and all federal candidates in the 2012 elections. If, warns the Declaration, the government does not act within one year to remedy its stated grievances, OWS will form a third political party to run in every Congressional seat in 2014 and 2016.
With Greece on the verge of default, Italy sucked into the storm, and French banks drawing ever closer to collapse, the euro has finally reached its endgame.
All that is solid melts into air. What we are experiencing at present will define our era for centuries to come. Precisely twenty years after the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of state communism, we are now approaching the endgame for the European Union and the potential demise of European capitalism. The train of economic integration has come grinding to a halt. These are tectonic shifts in world history. But our leaders seem largely oblivious to it.
In many ways, this year has already made its mark upon history: 2011 is the year of revolution, war and crisis; of terror, truth and disaster; of revenge, revolts and riots. But, as we predicted in an article back in December 2010, it might yet be remembered as the year of collapse. None of the underlying causes of the enduring global financial crisis have been addressed. Indeed, the chosen policy response — draconian austerity measures — has only made matters worse.
American institutions and government have been captured by oligarchs and kleptocrats, who systematically set about stealing and looting what was once a great nation.
America can once again be a great nation, but we must take it back. NOBODY will do this for us. It will not be handled back to us by bought 'representatives'.
Wall Street is a huge contributor to the political machine, which in turns enables Wall Street's corporate plunder of our nation. Both the Democratic and Republican parties set the bankster agenda because of the MONEY. When we speak of 'taking the MONEY out of politics', we have no choice but to focus on the sources of the MONEY.
As a critical FIRST STEP, we call on Citizens to take the lead. Bring your friends and neighbors together to non-violently protest the tyranny of kleptocrats on Sept 17, 2011 (#Sept17).
We at usdayofrage.org DO NOT tolerate violence of any kind. US Day of Rage NYC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles stand is solidarity with each others' actions and endorse the planned actions of the NYC Assembly to #occupywallstreet on #Sept17.
We will support and endorse the planned action of a NON-VIOLENT occupation of the financial district by the free and independent assembly of people, which is currently being planned by the NYC Assembly. We will post their website and plans as soon as they are live. The next assembly meeting is Saturday, August 27, 2011 at 5pm in Tompkins Square Park. Come down. Everyone is welcome.
What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion — and this invasion is being justified with the extensive use of mythology.
By Alex Andreou, originally published on SturdyBlog
I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.
What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.
US State Department cables released on Monday by the Telegraph (London) and WikiLeaks reveal that, in September 2009, in response to a perceived insult to President Muammar al-Qadhafi from the Canadian government, the Libyan National Oil Company threatened to nationalize the local assets of Petro-Canada, then a Canadian Crown corporation. The cables tie the diplomatic row to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon's threat to give al-Qadhafi a "public tongue-lashing" over his reception of Abdel Bassett al-Megrahi, whose conviction in the case of the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing and recent release from prison had both been controversial.
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The US ambassador notes the general concerns that Libya's successive threats to Petro-Can had raised in the international community:
The BBC reports that Berry Smutny, chief executive of the German partner in the EU's Galileo satellite-navigation project, has been removed by the board of OHB-System because of statements critical of the project that appear in a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks:
... Smutny [is] alleged to have told diplomats at a meeting in Berlin in October 2009 that Galileo, a flagship space programme of the EU, was a waste of taxpayers' money.
The cable, which was published by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten last Thursday, quoted the OHB-System chief as saying, "I think Galileo is a stupid idea that primarily serves French interests", and, in particular, French military interests.
Mr Smutny was further reported to say that Galileo was "doomed for failure" or would "have to undergo drastic scalebacks for survival".
Mr Smutny has denied making the statements reported in the cable.
Via Greg Mitchell at The Nation
In response to Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, who had demanded that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange be placed on a blacklist maintained by the US Treasury Department, a department representative said today, "We do not have evidence at this time as to Julian Assange or Wikileaks meeting criteria under which [Treasury] may designate persons and place them on the [sanctions list]."
WikiLeaks responded overnight to a call for sanctions against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks from Rep. Peter T. King, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security.
WikiLeaks condemns US embargo move
WikiLeaks today condemned calls from the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security to "strangle the viability" of WikiLeaks by placing the publisher and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, on a US "enemies list" normally reserved for terrorists and dictators.
Placement on the US "Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List" would criminalize US companies who deal with WikiLeaks or its editor. "The U.S. government simply cannot continue its ineffective piecemeal approach of responding in the aftermath of Wikileaks’ damage," King wrote in a letter to the Secretary of the US Treasury, Geithner. "The U.S. government should be making every effort to strangle the viability of Assange’s organization."
’The Homeland Security Committee chair Peter T. King wants to put a Cuban style trade embargo around the truth—forced on US citizens at the point of a gun,’ said Julian Assange.
Peter King, the Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security and whose hypocritical zeal in persecuting Wikileaks was explored in an article on December 7, 2010 by our own x7o, continues his campaign. According to an article in Nasdaq he has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Wednesday to prohibit people and companies within the U.S. from doing business with Wikileaks or Julian Assange. He would like both to be placed on the Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List, which the Treasury Department can use to bar companies and individuals subject to U.S. jurisdiction from conducting business with a given entity.
King noted that some U.S. companies had voluntarily cut off ties to Wikileaks, but that a New York publisher had recently agreed to pay Assange for an autobiography. Assange has said the book fees would help "keep Wikileaks afloat."
"The U.S. government simply cannot continue its ineffective piecemeal approach of responding in the aftermath of Wikileaks' damage," King wrote in a letter to Geithner. "The U.S. government should be making every effort to strangle the viability of Assange's organization."
A look at the US/NATO military as it is today. This is not your grandfather's army.
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