Capitalism

Simon's Cat

UC BERKELEY “OPEN UNIVERSITY” RAIDED BY UC POLICE, 65 ARRESTED

From LiveWeek: PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION

Contact: Elias Martinez (559) 999-4964 and Ianna Owen (570) 977-0487

This morning, on the fifth and final day of a weeklong “Open University” held at UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall, University of California Police stormed into the building around 5am, arresting 65 people without provocation, witnesses said.

“People were not given a final warning – police burst in while people were sleeping and immediately started locking doors and arresting people. Many students have papers due today, and finals to take starting tomorrow,” said Elias Martinez, an undergraduate from Political Science. “There had been cops in here all week, they were acting like it was okay. We had no idea.”

The police raid at UC Berkeley came one day after students participating in an occupation at San Francisco State University, also railing against budget cuts to public education, were arrested by SFSU Police at 3am.

Douglas Virgos, an undergraduate student, spent the night in the UC Berkeley building but then left on a food run in the early morning. “I got back and saw that the police had put handcuffs on the doors. I was there all night and never heard police tell us we had to leave.”

Students and faculty supporters who gathered on the scene shortly after raid alerts went out say they saw the students, some of them without shoes and wearing only their underwear, being loaded onto Alameda County Sheriff’s buses headed to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

“We’ll be shuttling people out there all day on caravans to do jail support and camp out there until the protesters are released,” said Melissa Barker, an undergraduate of Interdisciplinary Studies and parent. “The fact that the cops drove 65 people all the way to Dublin makes me think that the charges will be way more than misdemeanor trespassing. We’re worried, but we’ll do everything it takes to support our folks. We’ll be there all weekend if it takes.”

Students have been holding public events, including teach-ins on the UC budget, study-ins, and live music shows as part of a “Live Week” of Open University events since Monday.

The week of events was scheduled to end with a free concert in Wheeler Hall, where the Oakland-based political hip hop artist, Boots Riley, would perform tonight.

“We are going to proceed with the event today, and this show will be larger than ever. We’ll continue to organize with students from other schools and build a worldwide movement of students fighting to retain and expand public education,” said a student who withheld their name, fearing university reprisals. “The police attack only makes us angrier.”

Links:
Occupation Maintenance Council on Facebook
UC Strike web site
LiveWeek

Just like real life....

This would be truth in advertising...


Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

Infoshop.org Offline

Infoshop.org will be offline until they can pay their internet bill. Help them out by going to Paypal and sending a donation to chuck@mutualaid.org

John Lennon: October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980

Children don't create this reality. We bring them into it. What they ultimately do as they grow is what they learn to do from us. They are possibility and potential. They are still free. Something I was thinking about on this anniversary of John Lennon's death. - Cat ☮

Alexandros is every child.

When each of us matters, the whole community is as outraged as a mom or dad, an aunt or uncle, sister or brother. We have grown used to a society where no one really matters, except to those closest to him...no small insignificant one should matter to everyone. People are news, not individuals who each had a life.

When Alexandros was 15 and was murdered by the police, my nephew was 15 and alive. This made it very personal for me as I began to study my nephew throughout the month his face, his thoughts...thinking about 15-year-olds and their dreams and how very young they are. And though I am a pacifist, all I could think of was what if it was my nephew? I began to think violence is justified. I was confused. I understand better how people can become confused. I think if someone killed my nephew, I could kill them. And if I didn't kill them, I could surely burn down everything they stood for. I am still a pacifist. Those who participated in the uprising, they heal my heart as an aunt. They say this child mattered. Every child matters. Every person. Every life.

Love in the Ruins of Democracy - The Greek Uprising of 2008 - by Tolstoy's Cat

On the evening of Saturday December 6th, 2008 the police shot and killed 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos and left him for dead. Today is the anniversary of the 2008 Greek Uprising, which started with the death of this young anarchist boy and ended with Athens and other cities in flames after over a month of insurrection.

Love in the Ruins of Democracy - The Greek Uprising of 2008 - Blogcritics Politics

The Quest...

Obama

give thanks every day...end poverty, hunger, scarcity

Poster via: Estudiante Insurgente

Happy Birthday Silas...

Your birthday begins with a magic trick...



Next, of course, is a Jesus birthday joke...



Then, I am making you an honorary anarchist! To make it official here is your anarcake...


To wrap up your birthday, a dance, featuring a surprise encore performance...



Happy Birthday! Have a good time! ♥

IWW Interviews Noam Chomsky

"The editor of the Industrial Worker, Diane Krauthamer, spoke to Noam Chomsky at his MIT office in Cambridge, MA, on October 9th, 2009."

Inspired by b9AcE...

all you need is love...
b9AcE

(click photo)

The War on Kids

Someone just passed it along to me. The documentary just opened in NYC. I will review this after my torrent downloads (maybe). Meantime, a press release and a repost of the NYT review follow. If you'd like to have the film, you can buy a copy from www.thewaronkids.com.

Press Release:

The award-winning feature documentary, THE WAR ON KIDS, launches a nationwide grassroots screening tour that will bring the debate about public education to dozens of campuses and communities nationwide.

In 95 minutes, THE WAR ON KIDS exposes the many ways the public school system has failed children and our future by robbing students of all freedoms due largely to irrational fears. Children are subjected to endure prison-like security, arbitrary punishments, and pharmacological abuse through the forced prescription of dangerous drugs. Even with these measures, schools not only fail to educate students, but the drive to teach has become secondary to the need to control children. Not only do school fall short of their mission to educate, but they erode the country’s democratic foundation and often resemble prisons.

School children are interviewed as are high school teachers and administrators, and prison security guards, plus renowned educators and authors including:

Henry Giroux: Author of Stealing Innocence Corporate Culture's War on Children
Mike A. Males: Sociologist, author of Scapegoat Generation
John Gatto: New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year
Judith Browne: Associate Director of the Advancement Project
Dan Losen: The Civil Liberties Project, Harvard University
==============================================================================
The New York Times review:

The War on Kids
November 18, 2009
What Ails Public Schools? Better Ask, What Doesn’t?
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: November 18, 2009

A shocking chronicle of institutional dysfunction, “The War on Kids” likens our public school system to prison and its disciplinary methods to fascism. At least now you know why little Johnny won’t get out of bed in the morning.

Arranged in sections that range from merely interesting to downright horrifying, this provocative documentary suggests a system regulated by fear and motivated by the desire to control. Tracing the evolution and application of zero-tolerance policies on drugs and violence, the director, Cevin Soling, amasses overwhelming evidence of institutional overreaction. When an 8-year-old can be suspended for pointing a chicken finger and saying “Pow,” we know that common sense has officially left the building.

Impassioned interviews with educators, authors and medical professionals — and some very perceptive students — warn of the consequences of surrounding children daily with armed security guards and surveillance cameras.

“They don’t really prevent anything; they just take pictures of it,” says Jessica Botcher, a student at Columbine High School. Those pictures, however, are electrifying: an armed SWAT team terrorizing high school students in South Carolina; a tiny, terrified girl being handcuffed by burly police officers. Offering neither balance nor solutions (a segment on the overuse of medications like Ritalin is especially powerful, but especially in need of counterargument), “The War on Kids” questions what kind of citizens we are producing. Parent or child-free, we all have a dog in that particular fight.

Daniel Parker's Reply to Free Market Anarchism and Private Property

(Editorial note: This was a response by Daniel Parker to an individual. I've generalized the comment. --Cat)

I'm an anarchist and I completely disagree with this...conception of private property or of reality for that matter. I think [it] conflates private property with possession. I don't think [this perspective recognizes] the fact that private property means 'ownership' over stuff the owner cannot use to the extent that owners become a class by the monopolization of the means of production and this scarcity induces people to become wage slaves, simply because there is no place left for them to go. The Earth is finite and so are its natural resources - considering that we all depend on it for life, that we have all become wage slaves, and that we are all subjected to the consequences of decisions we didn't make but were made for us by hierarchies of bosses, owners, and politicians. It would appear to me that not only should the people affected by decisions be the ones making them, but that the people producing and servicing should be the ones defining the terms of these activities.

I honestly am appalled at the notion that market forces are acceptable for anti-authoritarians and anti-statists to base economic models on.

Even in social anarchism, a person has a right to possession and free association. How agorists, mutualists, capitalists, and other marketeers could ever misconceive of social anarchism to be authoritarian is beyond me - however I have tried sincerely many times to understand it.

Maybe propertarians and marketeers will snort at me, "But no one forces you to work for them!". Well, except for the case of private prisons or other forms of slavery, sure. I'll concede that. But generally you do have to work for someone. And that's what propertarians always like to gloss over, seemingly unaware of the monopolization of productive resources which induces people to submit to wage slavery and the resulting plunder and destruction of natural resources.

If anything, I consider them only to be concerned about the right to make a profit. Profit, of which the fact eludes them that it is distinct and generally disconnected from the cost of production, is something which people historically have gone to great lengths to protect, even using violence, deception, and certain other forms of general malevolence and ill will...(including the creation of states--if I may add. --Cat)

Support the Young Israeli Conscientious Objectors - The Shministim

Tell Israel to Free the Shministim.

Learn more about the teenage conscientious refusers who call themselves the Shministim.

FBI Arrests and Raids of Twitter Anarchist Activists

Friends of Tortuga (reprint)

"On October 1st, 2009, at 6:00am, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (a union of local police departments and the FBI), kicked out the front door to our home—an anarchist collective house in Queens, NY, affectionately known as Tortuga.

The FBI spent 16 hours ransacking our house before carting off boxes of our personal belongings, everything from computers, passports and even stuffed animals.

The apparent reason for this predawn raid was the arrest of two members of our household a week earlier in Pennsylvania. Our two friends were arrested and charged with several felonies for sending twitter messages during protests against the G20 in Pittsburgh."

Further information:
Friend's of Tortuga Blog
Twitter Revolution Solidarity Action: Free Elliot Madison! Allow twitter for protests in USA, not just Iran! Set your avatar red & black!
Story Oct. 6, 2009: Attorney: Info sent to G-20 protesters via Twitter was public

Democracy: America’s Oldest Spectator Sport - Noam Chomsky

Human nature and the study of humans. Intellectual Machines. (1)

Preface

We are not intellectual machines, but the creators of social reality. We are complex analyzers, and interpreters--each one of us a synthesizer of incoming information into a personal knowledge that interacts with, influences, and is influenced by others who are each doing the same thing and on a variety of levels from person-person to person-culture/group.

These cultures are many, as well. One individual may belong to a larger society, but also many smaller cultures and subcultures of subcultures. I am a person, but also a female, white/brown/yellow/red, considered beautiful or not, smart or not, old or young (and maybe all of these things in varied circumstances and by different groups). I may be a student or a scientist and each of these memberships, itself, results in still more subgroups, ingroups, and outgroups. Each group and subgroup has its own culture that creates a social reality. What is relevant and salient and useful to one may not be to another.

Human nature and the study of humans - a work in progress. Read at your own risk.

Warning to readers: I am a messy writer and thinker. My world is a chaos of larger pictures lost and found as I muddle around looking at the smaller pictures, while also losing and finding them. I contradict myself and back up to correct, forget half the evidence and can't seem to get all my ideas down in an orderly or comprehensive enough fashion to feel comfortable. I forget much of what I, myself, know on any given day and have to refer back to what I write to find out. This leaves even less room for remembering all the details of the evidence or the ideas of thinkers who've influenced me. I am more like a process than a destination. I write in fragments of ideas. I will experiment with trying to write, anyway.

1. Intellectual Machines

Everything is OK

"The only chains that exist are in your mind."

This is wonderful, hilarious, and full of great stuff! "I am not protesting, I am just speaking through a megaphone. And what I do is give people like you hugs." "Capitalism is a wonderful system. Okay, a few billion people get nothing. But still, think of all the people that get lots." "Everything is OK." "Please go back to your jobs."


"You were born free. You will live free. You will die free. You're allowed to make a scene. You're allowed to scream for joy. You're allowed to complain. You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to love people. You're allowed to hug people. And we're starting to live in a world where we're starting to feel scared. We're starting to forget just how divine and special we are as human beings. Every single one of you is the only example of you that will ever exist. And there is not a single authority in this world who can tell you how to behave at any time, any place, anywhere. You are free. You will live free. You will die free. The only chains that exist are in your mind."

Playing for Change - War/No More Trouble

Playing For Change | "War/No More Trouble" - Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

playingforchange.com - As we made our way around the world we encountered love, hate, rich and poor, black and white, and many different religious groups and ideologies. It became very clear that as a human race we need to transcend from the darkness to the light and music is our weapon of the future. This song around the world features musicians who have seen and overcome conflict and hatred with love and perseverance. We don't need more trouble, what we need is love. The spirit of Bob Marley always lives on.

This is the fourth Song Around The World video released from the CD/DVD Playing For Change: Songs Around The World and the follow up to the classics "Stand By Me," "One Love" and "Don't Worry." This unforgettable track was performed by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.

Sign up at playingforchange.com for updates and exclusive content. You can also buy cool stuff in our new online store!

Join the Playing for Change Online Street Team.

Join the movement to help inspire people from around the world to come together through music.

Andrej Grubacic 'Wobblies & Zapatistas'

Andrej Grubacic - Wobblies and Zapatistas from Jamie LeJeune on Vimeo.

Operation 'Hey Mackey!'

I am really liking the idea of protests that involve dancing.

Operation Hey Mackey! - Whole Foods, Oakland from Jamie LeJeune on Vimeo.