Chart of the day: We’re better than Albania!

From Sociological Images, graphic evidence of the decline in American public health. Click on the image to enlarge:

Marshall Davis Jones : “Touchscreen”

Delivered at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan, Jones delivers what us simply the most searingly eloquent and concise evisceration of the pretense and sham of the corporatized realm of social media. H/T to Adbusters.

Orson Welles, Mercury Theater, & Dickens

Yep, the man with the velvet tonsils does The Christmas Carol with the Mercury Theater troupe.

What more to say?

H/T to Open Culture.

A view from Greece: Utopia on the Horizon

From ROAR Magazine and the Syntagma Multimedia Team, signs of hope emerging from the misery being inflicted on the people of Greece by the global banking systems and their minions in government:

The program notes:

ROARMAG.org presents: ‘Utopia on the Horizon’, a documentary for those who chose to struggle.

In May 2011, hundreds of thousands of Greeks swarmed into Syntagma Square in Athens to protest against the firesale of their country, their labor rights and their livelihoods to corrupt domestic elites and foreign financial interests.

In a matter of days, a protest camp was set up — organized on the principles of direct democracy, leaderless self-management and mutual aid — providing a glimpse of utopia in the midst of a devastating financial, political and social crisis. On June 28-29, during a Parliamentary vote on further austerity measures, the state finally responded with brutal force, eventually evicting the protesters from the square and crushing the radical potential of their social experiment.

A year later, Leonidas Oikonomakis and Jérôme Roos — PhD researchers at the European University Institute and co-authors of the activist blog ROARMAG.org — returned to Athens to speak to activists involved in the movement and the occupation of Syntagma Square, as well as WWII resistance hero Manolis Glezos. What follows is this dramatic portrait of a country veering on the brink of collapse; and the people who chose to struggle in order to build a new world on the ruins of the old.

Manolis Glezos, articulate and insightful at age 90, is Greece’s most famous hero from the World War II resistance to Nazi occupation, immortalized in the Greek heart by his daring 30 May 1941 capture of the Nazi flag installed over the Parthenon a month earlier.

Repost: Santorum’s call to cut Social Security now

We first posted this back on 2 January, but it bears repeating. . .

 The rising star of the Republican right hasn’t merely touched the third rail of American politics — he’s grabbed it tight with both hands.

From Charles Babington of the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum called Friday for immediate cuts to Social Security benefits, risking the wrath of older voters and countless others who balk at changes to the entitlement program.

“We can’t wait 10 years,”even though “everybody wants to,” Santorum told a crowd while campaigning in New Hampshire and looking to set himself apart from his Republican rivals four days before the New Hampshire primary.

Most of his opponents have advocated phasing in a reduction and say immediate cuts would be too big a shock to current and soon-to-be retirees.

>snip<

Clearly aware of the risks, Santorum argued that everyone must sacrifice now because the nation’s “house is on fire” with soaring federal debt. He argued that he is being courageous and honest by telling Americans they can’t afford to wait to rein in Social Security’s growing costs. And he said he anticipated possible attack ads on his position.

Read the rest.

The Nazis had a phrase they used to derogate “unproductive” people who took public money: Useless eaters.

And while Santorum has avoided the term, it’s implicit in his agenda.

The media doesn’t help, including the AP, by dubbing the programs with a term with strongly pejorative implications: Entitlement programs. Note that in everyday speech, calling someone “entitled” carries a strongly negative implication.

It’s worth repeating an excerpt from an 8 November 1954  letter from then-President Dwight David Eisenhower to his older brother Edgar:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

That Santorum can effectively call for the cutting Social Security — a move that would imperil the lives of millions of American citizens — is evidence of just how far the Republican party has veered rightward since Ike’s day.

And note that the party is already effectively demolishing labor laws, and has declared against extension of unemployment benefits amidst the longest economic crash since the 1930s.

The inmates really are running the asylum, and Santorum is certainly an affluent inmate, as Bloomberg reported Thursday:

Since his 2006 re-election defeat, the former Pennsylvania lawmaker has gone from being one of the poorer members of the U.S. Senate to earning $1.3 million between January 2010 and August 2011. In 2007, he spent $2 million to buy a 5,000-square foot home in Great Falls, Virginia, according to property records.

Santorum’s financial rise was powered by consulting contracts with fuel producer Consol Energy Inc. (CNX), faith advocacy group Clapham Group and American Continental Group, a Washington consultancy, as well as media engagements.

Banned Commercial: Save Greece’s heritage

The Geek government doesn’t want you to see this, created by the Greek Archaeologists Association against the IMF/E.U. cuts in culture funding.

From Areti Kotseli of Greek Reporter:

The Association of Greek Archaeologists (SEA) launched a campaign in March this year, an international appeal for the protection of Greece’s cultural heritage and historical memory, titled Monuments Have no Voice, They Must Have Yours.

Now, one of the campaign’s videos has been banned by the Central Archaeological Council. It had circulated for several months via the Internet and social media, but it failed to receive an official approval on Aug. 28 after they pointed out security lapses in guarding monuments, embarrassing authorities.

The Council rejected the video because it was inspired by the grand thefts which took place at the Olympia Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Antiquity earlier this year, when dozens of ancient artifacts were stolen, after another art theft at the Athens National Gallery, when two oil paintings by 20th-Century masters Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian were stolen.

The Association of Greek Archaeologists put together the campaign to draw attention to funding cuts that are threatening the Greek cultural heritage and, as it said, the “austerity packages and authoritarian measures, that are currently tearing apart Greece and its monuments”.

The organization has a petition on Facebook. Sadly, you have to belong to Facebook to sign, and since we refuse to succumb to the Facebook agenda, we can’t add our name.

In childhood, we had intended to become a member of the archaeologist’s trade, and the very first word we insisted or third grade teacher to show us how to write in cursive was archaeology [we still have the exemplar].

Since the American imperial adventure has already destroyed much of Iraq’s archaeological heritage, we find it unconscionable that the U.S.-based International Monetary Fund and it’s Troika allies are demanding that Greece cut funding for its own heritage — a form of “war by other means.”

A new cause of sleep disorder: Call it iNsomnia

You say you spend hours a day at your iPad, or in front of your backlit desktop or notebook screen?

And when you got to bed you find yourself tossing and turning, chasing the restful balm of sleep?

Well, you may well be experiencing the loss of a key natural sleep-inducing chemical, and that addictive screen may well be the cause.

We bring you in full a fascinating tale from Rebekah Mullaney, scribe for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, reporting on some new research. And note the funding source:

A new study from the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that a two-hour exposure to electronic devices with self-luminous “backlit” displays causes melatonin suppression, which might lead to delayed bedtimes, especially in teens.

The research team, led by Mariana Figueiro, associate professor at Rensselaer and director of the LRC’s Light and Health Program, tested the effects of self-luminous tablets on melatonin suppression. In order to simulate typical usage of these devices, 13 individuals used self-luminous tablets to read, play games, and watch movies. Results of the study, titled “Light level and duration of exposure determine the impact of self-luminous tablets on melatonin suppression,” were recently published in the journal Applied Ergonomics.

“Our study shows that a two-hour exposure to light from self-luminous electronic displays can suppress melatonin by about 22 percent. Stimulating the human circadian system to this level may affect sleep in those using the devices prior to bedtime,” said Figueiro.

The actual melatonin suppression values after 60 minutes were very similar to those estimated using a predictive model of human circadian phototransduction for one-hour light exposures. “Based on these results, display manufacturers can use our model to determine how their products could affect circadian system regulation,” said Figueiro.

The results of this study, together with the LRC predictive model of human circadian phototransduction, could urge manufacturers to design more “circadian-friendly” electronic devices that could either increase or decrease circadian stimulation depending on the time of day—reducing circadian stimulation in the evening for a better night’s sleep, and increasing in the morning to encourage alertness. In the future, manufacturers might be able to use data and predictive models to design tablets for tailored daytime light exposures that minimize symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, and sleep disorders in seniors. Individuals would be able to receive light treatments while playing games or watching movies, making light therapy much more enjoyable than just sitting in front of a light box.

Along with Figueiro, co-authors of the study are LRC Director and Professor Mark S. Rea, LRC Research Specialist Brittany Wood, and LRC Research Nurse Barbara Plitnick.

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland at night and under conditions of darkness in both diurnal and nocturnal species. It is a “timing messenger,” signaling nighttime information throughout the body. Exposure to light at night, especially short-wavelength light, can slow or even cease nocturnal melatonin production. Suppression of melatonin by light at night resulting in circadian disruption has been implicated in sleep disturbances, increased risk for diabetes and obesity, as well as increased risk for more serious diseases, such as breast cancer, if circadian disruption occurs for many consecutive years, such as in nightshift workers.

“Technology developments have led to bigger and brighter televisions, computer screens, and cell phones,” said Wood, who used the study as the basis for her master’s thesis. “To produce white light, these electronic devices must emit light at short wavelengths, which makes them potential sources for suppressing or delaying the onset of melatonin in the evening, reducing sleep duration and disrupting sleep. This is particularly worrisome in populations such as young adults and adolescents, who already tend to be night owls.”

In the study, the participants were divided into three groups. The first group viewed their tablets through a pair of clear goggles fitted with 470-nm (blue) light from light emitting diodes (LEDs). This was a “true positive” condition because the blue light is known to be a strong stimulus for suppressing melatonin. The second group viewed their tablets through orange-tinted glasses, capable of filtering out the short-wavelength radiation that can suppress melatonin; this was the “dark control” condition. The third group did not wear glasses or goggles. Each tablet was set to full brightness.

The glasses. Photo from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

In order to accurately record personal light exposures during the experiment, each subject wore a Dimesimeter close to the eye. The

Mary Mellor: Money as a Social Construct

Emeritus Professor at Northumbria University in Newcastle and founding Chair of the University’s Sustainable Cities Research Institute, Mary Mellor is the author of The Future of Money, From Financial Crisis to Public Resource.

Via Irish Left Review, a talk she gave earlier this year at Schumacher College:

From Irish Left Review:

The first part of the talk deals with the limits of orthodox economic thinking and why it failed to foresee the disaster of the latest financial crisis, but she also outlines alternative views which challenge and fill in the gaps ignored by those with the unitary fixation of “economic man” and efficient market theory.

Her focus though is on the social construction of money and how the ability to create money has only recently been ceded to banks. The 90% of the world’s money supply created by banks through loans can only exist because it is backed by the state. But the privatization of the creation of the money supply has meant that the proper provisioning of society is ignored in the interests of profit seeking. Since the financial crisis began, however, the ability of the state to create money has been taken back by governments through quantitative easing, commonly referred to as the ability to print money. However, in most cases this new printed money was not directed to sustaining society’s needs but in order, the governments claimed, to get the banks to provide credit to consumers. The result was that because of the ongoing crisis they simply sat on it, with the benefits of the move accumulating to the wealthy.

Video report: Sex, Lies and Julian Assange

From journalists Andrew Fowler and Wayne Harley of Four Corners, Australia’s prime time television news magazine [think 60 Minutes Down Under], a look at the charges against the WikiLeaks founder in context:

A full transcript is posted on the show’s website here. Click on the “show transcript” button at the bottom.

It’s a good piece of journalism. As Fowler notes, “At the heart of the matter is whether the Swedish judicial authorities will treat him fairly. Certainly, events so far provide a disturbing picture of Swedish justice.”

The journalists also received a copy of a sub poena that offers strong indications that, contrary to Justice Department denials, a grand jury is investigating Assange in espionage charges.

Jennifer Robinson, one of the attorneys representing assage, tells the reporters “We are very concerned about the very prospect of potential extradition to the US. We need only look to the treatment of Bradley Manning. He’s been held in pre-trial detention for more than two years now, in conditions for a large part of that detention which the UN Special Repertoire said amount to torture. We are very concerned about the prospect of him ending up in the US, and the risk of onward extradition from Sweden was always a concern and remains a concern.”

There’s little doubt that her concerns are fully justified.

From Greece, a creative response to the crisis

For one group of young Greece, crisis was opportunity — the chance to forge a creative response to crisis in the form on a new community on an island off the coast north of Athens.

We’ll begin with a short video report from NTD.TV:

Athenian website designer Apostolos Sianos and three friends packed up and headed to the island of Evia and the slopes of Mount Telaithrion, where Sianos had inherited some land. They launched an experiment they call Free and Real [for Freedom of Resources for Everyone, Respect, Equality, Awareness and Learning].

As their website explains:

The Telaithrion Project’s mission is to create a prototype, sustainable, circular community in Greece which will be characterized as a combination of a Resource Sharing Society with the mentality of a Freeconomic Community and based on Common Law principles. We believe the necessities of life should be available to anyone and everyone.

Chloe Hadjimatheou of the BBC reports:

The group sleeps communally in yurts they have built themselves, they grow their own food and exchange the surplus in the nearest village for any necessities they cannot produce.

“What others saw as a global economic crisis, we saw as a crisis of civilisation,” Mr Sianos explains.

“Everything seemed to be in crisis – healthcare, the environment, education. So we made the decision to try something different.”

Mr Sianos and his eco-activist companions first met in an online forum in 2008 and after two years of exploring ideas decided to put their principles into practice.

“When I first made the decision to give up the city and move to this patch of land I was a little nervous,” he admits.

“But now I can’t imagine ever being attracted by that kind of lifestyle again.”

Read the rest.

Defining a vision

In many respects, their experiment recalls some of the communal experiments of the 1960′s here in the United States, though without the fuzziness.

From their website, a description of their vision:

By combining the tenants of a Resource Sharing Society with the mentality of a Freeconomic Community and Common Law principals, we as a society can begin to develop a manner of living worthy of our species.

To do so, we need to:

•     Take care of each other regardless of superficial egos and fabricated divisions such as nationality, race, gender, financial background, etc.
•     Dramatically reduce environmental stress, resource waste and the abuse we’re currently allowing on Earth.
•     Abandon a Fiat Based Currency and adopt a Resource Sharing Society.

The Telaithrion Project is not intended to overcome all the problems of current society and does not profess to be some utopia of perfection. The first phase of the Telaithrion Project is to operate simply as a self sustainable, experimental prototype and serve as a transitional operational pilot for future implementation.

The second phase shall focus on the development of research facilities and experimental technologies, whilst being open to the public for a variety of workshops, seminars, Eco-tourism, and any other means of interactive formal and non-formal education.

Here’s a short HD video they produced about the project:

Here’s their mission statement:

The Telaithrion Project’s mission is to create a prototype, sustainable, circular community in Greece which will be characterized as a combination of a Resource Sharing Society with the mentality of a Freeconomic Community and based on Common Law principals.We believe the necessities of life should be available to anyone and everyone.

Our goals are to ensure:

•     Social stability through a well developed communications education system
•     Economic stability through intelligently managed resources
•     Quality medical care
•     Constantly updated educational system
•     A clean environment
•     Variety of energy efficient housing with the use of low impact materials
•     Essential goods and services
•     Recreational facilities
•     Access to all amenities

The project’s website explains the community’s physical structure:

The community will be divided in 3 basic major sections.

The Geodesic Dome Cluster

In the center of the community, the Geodesic Dome Cluster will faction like the heart of the entire project.

Composed of 5 interconnected Geodesic Domes, each one with a different purpose.

The main dome will be about 100 square meters and the 4 surrounding ones will be about 50 square meters each.

These will be available to all members of the community, they will be used as common spaces and they will house educational, communication and support facilities, art and music center, science and research center, athletics and entertainment.

The Yurt Modules

For residential and housing purposes 3 individual Yurt Modules will be used. Each Yurt Module will consist of 6 interconnected individual yurts.

In each module’s center, a 45-square-meter yurt will serve as a common space in between the other 5, 16-square-meter yurts.

In the common space yurt there will be central heating, bathrooms, small kitchen, library, terminal server and other shared facilities.

The 5 smaller yurts will be for personal use, with large bedrooms, study rooms, etc.

With this design we reduce the total needs on energy and materials by a factor of 5.

The Forest Garden

Basically the entire community will be immersed inside a magnificent forest garden. This garden will be developed though the use of the Natural Farming method.

Many waterways will surround this belt to irrigate the forest and offer a sustainable climate for both plants and people.

Only organically grown crops would be grown, without the use of dangerous fertilizers and pesticides. Most of the plants and the trees in the garden will be eatable and they will support the nutritional needs of the community.

Also many supporting structures like, tool sheds, greenhouse, compost facilities etc will be spread out around the community.

And from their vlog, a short documentary on yurt building:

It’s hard not to like what they’re doing.

Gore Vidal on the American national security state

Provocative, outspoken, sometimes eccentric, and invariably interesting, Gore Vidal shuffled off the mortal coil last night in Los Angeles. He was 86.

A member of the American aristocracy and a man who delighted in provoking power, Vidal was, among other things, a brilliant novelist, a scintillating essayist, and a relentless critic of Imperial America, he was, above else, endlessly entertaining.

Here’s his 18 March 1998 appearance at the National Press Club, where his address starts at about the ten minutes mark and ends at the one-hour mark. It’s a devastating and witty critique of the national security state. Note his prescient critique of NATO:

Vidal was regarded by many in the elite as a class traitor, with William F. Buckley Jr. Among his most outspoken critics. Here’s a memorable confrontation between the two from 1968 during the Democratic National Convention:

From his Los Angeles Times obituary:

“Style,” Vidal once said, “is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” By that definition, he was an emperor of style, sophisticated and cantankerous in his prophesies of America’s fate and refusal to let others define him.

Business Insider has a collection of quotes. A couple worth noting:

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

More from a compendium posted by The Guardian:

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return”

“We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.”

“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

UPDATE: Mr. Fish has just posted his own graphic tribute to the writer, via his blog Clowncrack, and titled simply “Gore Vidal”:

 

Important documentary: The Power Principle

An important documentary by Scott Noble. The Power Principle exposes the hidden agenda driving American foreign policy over the last seven decades and its gruesome consequences.

Historian Michael Parenti calls the film “A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of today.”

In an interview for Soldiers for the Cause, a veterans group supporting the Occupy movement, filmmaker Noble outlines the theses advanced in his documentary:

• The Cold War was not just a struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States; the real struggle was between American corporations and the Third World.
• Top policy planners in the US and other Western nations were acutely aware that the Soviet Union had a conservative foreign policy. You can see this in numerous declassified documents.
• Nevertheless, the American government engaged in what can only be described as a campaign of terrorism against the American people, constantly invoking the “Soviet Menace” to justify military spending and war.
• The United States does not have a free press.
• The Pentagon is a Keynsian Mechanism.
• The American government was responsible for genocide during the Cold War.
• The Empire is similar to the mafia.
• Corporate interests are inextricably wed with military policy.
• American imperialism is not of recent vintage.
• Elites deceive themselves as well as the public.
• The US is not exceptional. It is behaving pretty much as powerful states always have.
• Western elites supported fascism prior to, during and after WWII.
• A WWIII scenario is almost inevitable unless the American public wakes up – and fast.

For more information see the film’s website.

And now, the documentary:

The Power Principle – I: Empire

The program notes:

An Introduction to the Empire; Iran – Oil and Geopolitics; Guatemala – the “merger of state and corporate power”; The Congo – Neocolonialism; Grenada – “The Mafia Doctrine”; Chile – “libertarianism with a small l”; Globalization: Consequences.

1945: Grand Area Strategy; Fascism: a “rational system of the plutocracy”; Case Studies: the Greek Communists; The Italian Communists; the Spanish Anarchists; Fascism’s Western backers; Trading with the Enemy; Fascism as “preservation of civilization”; the Cold War and “A Century of Fear”.

The Power Principle – II: Propaganda

The program notes:

The Soviet Menace?; Case Studies: El Salvador, Nicaragua; Propaganda: Self-Deception and blowback; The “International Communist Conspiracy”; Declassified Documents; NSC 68; The Pentagon as Keynsian Mechanism; The Military Industrial Complex; The War against the Third World; Shifting rationales; What is imperialism?; Case Study: Haiti; “War is a racket”.

Fear-based conditioning – The War of the Worlds, The Triumph of the Will; World view Warfare; The Russians are coming; Television: The “perfect propaganda medium”; Soviet vs. American propaganda; Hollywood and the Pentagon; Psywarriors and the media; Operation Mockingbird; The Pentagon Pundits; Project Revere; The Bomber Gap; “scare the hell out of them”.

The Power Principle – III: Apocalypse

The program notes:

Mutually Assured Destruction; MAD men – Curtis Lemay and the super hawks; MAD men – Hermann Kahn and the Rand Corporation; Over flights as provocation; Cuba: the “danger of a good example”; terrorism against Cuba; “Unconventional warfare”; the Cuban Missile Crisis and the “man who saved the world”.

Why did the Soviet Union collapse?; Gorbachev: a “more violent, less stable world”; the Pentagon’s New Map; Did Ronald Reagan end the Cold War?; The Brink of Apocalypse: Able Archer; The betrayal of Russia; The expansion of NATO; Yugoslavia and Libya; the Yeltsin coup; Living standards in the former Soviet Union; A third way?

Video: Solidarity networks emerge in Athens

A very important work in progress, Community Organising depicts the most creative response we’ve seen yet to the Greek economic crisis, the emergence of self-organizing community support systems to provide for the needs of those most stricken by the unfolding disaster.

Though sparked by a crisis, the networks emerging in Greece offer hope for the present and models for the future, a more truly democratic, self-organized way of providing for community needs.

The Greek networks are community and neighborhood based, working from the bottom up to provide what a corrupt top-down system can no longer provide.

What passes for democracy these days is an alienating system, devoid of the direct, energetic engagement of the public, the inevitable product of an economic system in which the media of communication exist not to educate and illuminate but to extract wealth through the sophisticated selling of goods created to meet manufactured needs.

Greece is the canary in the coal mine, and we can learn both from the systemic failures that brought it about and from the creative responses of an aroused and energized populace.

We humans seem to change only in response to crisis, so let’s make the best of it, and these Greeks are showing us a way to do it.

The documentary, to be released soon in final form, is from Reel News, an independent, non-aligned video collective “set up to publicise and share information on inspirational campaigns and struggles.” Based in Britain, the collective’s members document movement across the globe.

For more of their videos, see their You Tube vlog here.

H/T to From the Greek Streets.

Canada’s largest mass arrest targets students

At least 518 protesters were arrested in Montreal after police performed a classic kettling operation, but a new announcement from Quebec Premier Jean Charest indicates that the 102-day-old protest may be on the verge of victory.

In addition to the arrests in Montreal, at least 170 other were arrested in Quebec City and Sherbrooke, according to RT.

Those numbers make last night’s action the largest-ever mass arrest in the nation’s history.

We begin with a video from Pierre Chauvin of The Link, the student newspaper of Concordia University, shot before last night’s arrests in Montreal.

Next a report on the arrests by Allen McInnis of the Montreal Gazette:

It was a peaceful river of humanity for more than three hours, with about 3,000 people walking, chanting and feeling united on the 30th consecutive night of the student protests in Montreal.

Then, in a heartbeat, Wednesday night’s big march turned ugly.

Just before midnight police surrounded a large group of protesters at Sherbrooke and St. Denis Sts. to make a mass arrest, Montreal police Constable Daniel Fortier said. Police said on Thursday morning the arrests totaled 518, making it the largest number of people arrested in a single night so far in the weeks-long student protest.

It also surpassed the 497 arrests made under the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970.

506 of those arrested were caught in the kettle, including 30 minors. They were each fined $634 for illegal assembly, while the penalty for the minors is $118. The remaining 12 were isolated arrests, including four for criminal acts and eight for city bylaw infractions, police said.

Read the rest.

The protest of the Casseroles

Students, who are protesting an 83 percent tuition hike, have adopted a unique style, banging pots and pans as they march through the city.

Here’s a video shot in one Montreal neighborhood of the beginning of last night’s demonstration from vlogger GNOMEchomsky:

Dario Ayala of the Montreal Gazette offers some context:

Bang, bang, bang – ping!

A phenomenon is sweeping Montreal and other cities that gives new meaning to the term Bloc Pot – no, nothing to do with Quebec’s marijuana party.

The stink that’s being raised is a block party, every night at 8 o’clock in places as varied as Verdun and Villeray, Sherbrooke and Quebec City.

It’s called “Nos casseroles contre la loi spéciale!”

And it makes loud use of pots and pans.

In neighbourhoods in and outside the metropolis, at the strike of 8, students and teachers, parents and kids, renters and homeowners, go outside and start banging saucepans and skillets, pieplates and pots.

The target of the protest is the Charest government’s emergency Bill 78, which regiments public demonstrations as a response to the province-wide student strike, now in its fourth month.

Read the rest.

In the contest of wills, Charest blinks first

The draconian provisions of the special law rammed through the provincial legislature was passed in hopes the $125,000 fines imposed on student organizations and unions backing the strike would force a capitulation. The legislation also imposes $7,000 fines on individuals who fall within its provisions.

But that’s clearly not working.

So Charest may be grabbing at Plan B.

From CBC News:

In the midst of an expanding social crisis, Premier Jean Charest is replacing his most senior aide and bringing back a right-hand man with a reputation for steady competence.

Daniel Gagnier is being brought back after three years away from politics and is returning to his old position as chief of staff. He replaces Luc Bastien.

Gagnier is apparently being given a mandate to kick-start negotiations with student groups and seek a resolution to the unrest plaguing the province, before tourists flock to Montreal for festival season.

Read the rest.

There’s one industry going great guns in the crash

And that would be the gun industry, which is racking up record sales since the onset of the economic collapse.

From Tim Devaney of the Washington Times:

The economic impact of the firearms industry is up 66 percent since the beginning of the Great Recession, providing an unexpected shot in the arm for the economy, according to a new study.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation says the economic impact of firearm sales — a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales — hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008.

Jobs in the firearms business jumped 30 percent from 2008 to 2011, when the industry employed 98,750.

The industry paid $2.5 billion in federal taxes in 2011, up 66 percent in three years.

Read the rest.

One company that’s been doing especially well is Sturm Ruger, the same folks who manufactured our first and only handgun, a high school graduation gift.

From MarketWatch:

Sturm Ruger & Co.’s announcement that it would stop taking orders until it clears an enormous backlog serves as the latest sign of the boom times for the U.S. firearms business.

[On 21 March] Sturm Ruger said that in the first quarter, it had received orders for more than 1 million units. And despite “efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders,” Sturm Ruger said.

Read the rest.

Gun sales hit a record in December, apparently because folks thought a pistol makes the perfect stocking-stuffer in hard times.

Here’s a chart of gun sales by year from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ statistics page [click on the image to enlarge]:

What we’d really like to see is some demographics on these new gun buyers.

Growing up in Kansas farm country and later in Colorado, guns were a given. Farmers kept ‘em for shooting “varmints,” and in those days, most of the folks we knew were hunters. In other words, guns were tools, used either for protecting crops and livestock or for procuring food.

But who’s buying them now? And why?

A closer look at the statistics reveals a couple of curious conundrums.

With gun sales rising, the number of households owning guns was down, at least as of the end 2010, according to an April 2011 report from the Violence Policy Center:

Household gun ownership in the United States has dropped to its lowest level since it peaked in 1977 according to a report issued today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) analyzing new data from the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The GSS has tracked household and personal gun ownership since the early 1970s and, except for the U.S. Census, is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences.

Read the rest.

So do we have folks who are already gun owners simply stocking up on more guns?

And there’s one more conundrum: With gun sales rapidly rising, crime is down, evoking a commentary from Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann:

The experts are baffled because the trend conflicts with a number of long-held assumptions. Criminologists thought that hard economic times and high unemployment tended to prompt crime. But robberies, for example, fell since the beginning of the recession in 2008. Similarly, many experts saw a link between crime and the number of prison inmates, the theory being that people behind bars can’t commit crimes. But because of budget cuts in several states, the prison population actually shrank.

Among several hypotheses for the drop in crime: demographics. The United States is ageing and the fastest growing segment of the population is over-50s, an age group historically less prone to violence and criminal activity than younger people. Another theory: better policing thanks to widespread use of technology to spot crimes. In short: nobody has a convincing answer and, surprisingly in a country full of experts given to predictions, there are no forecasts on how long the trend of declining crime will last.

Read the rest.

It’s all very curious.

Headline of the day: Read it and weep

From the London Daily Mail:

Breast cancer survivor handcuffed and thrown in jail over a mistaken $280 medical bill as ‘debtor’s prisons’ return to the U.S

Quote of the day: From a hero’s daughter

From Emy Chrstoula, daughter of Dimitris Christoulas, who killed himself in Syntagma Square in protest over the miseries inflicted on his nation by the banksters, eurocrats, and their collaborators in the Greek government:

My father’s handwritten not left on room for misinterpretation. He has been a leftist activist throughout his life, a selfless visionary.

This specific act of his ending is a conscious political act, entirely consistent with his beliefs and actions during his lifetime. In our country, Greece, they are killing the self-evident.

For some, for ‘the stubborn children of the chimera”, in such a situation, suicide seems to be the obvious act, not as a getaway, but as an awakening scream.

For this reason, it (the suicide) takes on another meaning, the meaning of that song we first sang together, at the concert of our beloved Mikis (Theodorakis), in 1975, the song we always sang at our own celebrations and for our own dead … Go to sleep father and I am heading to my brothers and sisters with your voice.

This is the only thing you were dreaming for the youth and I think you’ve accomplished it. At the site where you left, there is a not of a youth: “The name of the dead today is Democracy. . .But it’s 11 million of us that are still alive and our name is Resistance.”

Via For what we are… they will be.

And for more on Christoulas, see here.

Land, money, & bubbles: Real Estate 4 Ransom

From Australian directors Karl Fitzgerald and Gavin Emmanuel, a powerful video on land ownership and the real estate speculation that leads inevitably to booms and busts. Pop it up to full screen for best viewing [it's HD].

The film features incisive comments on California’s Proposition 13, the role of real estate tax breaks in fueling bubbles, serious questions about the presumptions on modern concepts of land ownership [imposed on the globe by the U.S. and Great Britain in the wake of World War I], and much more.

Also featured the observations of economist Michael Hudson, an esnl favorite, of whose website we discovered this very timely documentary.

From the film’s website:

Real Estate 4 Ransom is a documentary about global property speculation and its impact on the economy. Real Estate 4 Ransom considers the changing motivations behind property investment and challenges the notion that the Global Financial Crisis was caused by bank lending alone.

Shot over 5 years, the film focuses an economics lens on many of the big picture issues world politics are grappling to deal with. The 40 min documentary looks at whether genuine freedom has been delivered by the democratic system.

We investigate the inefficiencies of the economic system and the impact this has on potential homeowners and small businesses. The documentary argues that with a simpler tax system, entrepreneurs have a better chance to succeed and the average Australian has a better chance of owning their own home.

What role did real estate play in the crashing of the global economy?

Video: You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train

A compelling 2004 documentary about historian, writer, playwright and  provocateur Howard Zinn directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller and narrated by actor Matt Damon, who knew Zinn from childhood as a neighbor and mentor.

A compelling bi of cinema featuring interviews with Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Alice Walker, and others, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train is well worth your time. You can order a copy here.

Must-watch video: Aftermath of a Crisis

The Dutch documentarians of VPRO Backlight have produced some of the finest accounts of the forces shaping modern life [previously], and now director Bregtje van der Haak brings us one of their best efforts, Aftermath of a Crisis.

First, their program notes:

Shortly after the beginning of the financial crisis of 2008 sociologist Manuel Castells gathered a small group of international top intellectuals to ponder the crisis. While the crisis expanded, Castells named his group ‘The Aftermath Network’, a reference to the new world which according to him will emerge from the ashes of the crisis.

But instead of recruiting political scientists and economists, Castells recruited fellow sociologists, media studies experts, a philosopher and a historian, as well as others who could examine critical events outside the usual realm of media discourse.

Castells, who teaches at the University of Catalonia in Barcelona, has assembled an impressive group of colleagues, including:

• MIT historian Rosalind Williams
• New York University sociologist Craig Calhoun
• IUL Lisbon sociologist Gustavo Cardoso
• Philosopher Pekka Hilmanen of IADH Helsinki
• Cambridge sociologist John Thompson
• Sociologist Michel Wieviorka of the EHESS in Paris
• Joāo Caraça, science director for the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
• Sarah Banet-Weiser, UCLA professor of media
• Theri Rantanen. London School of Economics media studies professor

What follows are our notes made whilst perusing this very important 48-minute video that offers some fresh, critical insights on the most important evens of the day, interspersed with some dramatic video footage of artistic impressions of the crisis:

Calhoun notes that the crisis “belongs to culture and society,” not just bankers, and Hilmanen says the cure prescribed is even worse than the disease.

Thompson said what began as an economic crisis has metamorphosed into a full-blown political crisis as the burden of financial responsibility has been shifted from banks to governments, creating in turn a social crisis, as governments increasingly answer to investors rather than citizens, triggering anger, resentment, and protest from the public. Governments are thus caught in a Faustian trap, and actions on the street may count for more than the acts of legislators.

Calhoun follows up, noting that governments are answering to banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, credit markets, ratings agencies, “but not the needs of ordinary citizens — so there is a widespread distrust.”

Castells notes that the public no longer sees government as answerable to them; rather, government answers to the institutions of money, leaving the people to feel orphaned.

Wieviorka observes that “today many people are feeling that they just don’t know where we are going to.”  We should transform the image of a system into the image of actors, he says. We have new social actors who want to bring different answers to these problems.

Williams says that this crisis appears different, a major shift in the flow of history, from the thirty glorious years of her early life during the post World War II industrial boom. The world is changing, with regional crises interacting and reflecting off each other. She describes the current situation as “a rolling apocalypse.”

For the first time since the end of World War II, Caraça says, we have become afraid of the future, feeeling that tomorrow will become worse than today. “We are, in fact, losing this idea of the future.”

The role of science is becoming more dominant, “but what sort of science? The old type of science, science that was curiosity driven, is gone. The science we have today is techno-science,” science used to create technology.

The segment that really caught our attention featured UCLA media prof Banet-Weiser:

“What better way for the U.S. to regain the tgrust” of the public, says , “than to position the crisis as a brand.” In the 21st Century, I think that what brands do is more than advertising, they go beyond advertising to establish the fact that the crisis was something that was inevitable. In other words, it was just a moment in the great progress of capitalism. And so what individual consumers need to do is figure out individually, not with help of the state, is to figure out a way not only to rescue the crisis but rescue themselves form the crisis. So it becomes this brand, ‘Use the crisis as a moment of opportunity to regain trust, to regain opportunity, and to regain capitalism.’” As an example, she offers a Levi’s campaign set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a city devastated by loss of industry, ending with euphoric, optimistic images set to poetry by Walt Whitman, following up with another ad featuring actual citizens of the city and narrated by child and ending with a literal new dawn. It wasn’t corporate greed, it wasn’t failure of the banks, it was just ‘something got broken.’” The net effect was “to abstract the crisis out of any kind of individual blame or institutional