Student Loan Fury

” The last thing the current ruling class wants is a group of people trained to think critically, i.e., question the structure and conventions propagated by the ruling classes. . . .what the ruling class wants are technicians. ”

Amplify’d from www.counterpunch.org

Student Loan Fury in the Occupy Movement

by BRIAN McKENNA

Young people in the U.S. now recognize that the university has become part of a ponzi scheme designed to place on students an unconscionable amount of debt while subjecting them under the power of commanding financial institutions for years after they graduate. Under this economic model of subservience, there is no future for young people.

“What the ruling class wants are technicians”

” The last thing the current ruling class wants is a group of people trained to think critically, i.e., question the structure and conventions propagated by the ruling classes. . . .what the ruling class wants are technicians. ” Read more at www.counterpunch.org

 

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Military Lock Up citizens in the ‘Battlefield’ They Define as Being Outside Your Window’.

““A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”



~Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Amplify’d from my.firedoglake.com

Senate to Vote on Defense Authorization Act Nov. 28: So Loaded Obama Might Veto It? We May Get to See.

Behind closed doors, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have added a couple new sections to the NDAA that could find Americans arrested, locked up indefinitely without charge, and being shunted into the military tribunal system.  There would be no guarantees, of course, that  detainees would ever see the inside of even a military courtroom.

The ACLU is not just fooling around with their title: ‘Senators Demand the Military Lock Up citizens in the ‘Battlefield’ They Define as Being Outside Your Window’.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.”

If enacted, sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA would:

1)  Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2)  Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice. Read more at my.firedoglake.com

 

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Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers...

"When our cops are focused on executing large-scale, constitutionally questionable raids at the slightest hint that a small-time pot dealer is at work, real police work preventing and investigating crimes like robberies and rapes falls by the wayside,"

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime

Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn't bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for a pool of federal anti-drug grants. The more arrests and drug seizures a department can claim, the stronger its application for those grants.

"The availability of huge federal anti-drug grants incentivizes departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, and leads our police officers to abandon real crime victims in our communities in favor of ratcheting up their drug arrest stats," said former Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Stephen Downing. Downing is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an advocacy group of cops and prosecutors who are calling for an end to the drug war.

And this problem is on the rise all over the country. Last year, police in New York City arrested around 50,000 people for marijuana possession. Pot has been decriminalized in New York since 1977, but displaying the drug in public is still a crime. So police officers stop people who look "suspicious," frisk them, ask them to empty their pockets, then arrest them if they pull out a joint or a small amount of marijuana. They're tricked into breaking the law. According to a report from Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, there were 33,775 such arrests from 1981 to 1995. Between 1996 and 2010 there were 536,322. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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The Century of the self- Happiness Machines

He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.

Amplify’d from vimeo.com

The Century of the self [1/4] Happiness Machines

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world. Read more at vimeo.com

 

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...Furthermore, it's pretty clear that from this perspective, the police have no reciprocal "responsibilities" to the citizenry.

Amplify’d from www.informationliberation.com

Support Your Local Police State

In the recent nationally coordinated police crack-downs on “Occupy” protesters we have seen the following scenario play out numerous times: Peaceful demonstrators confront riot police; individual riot policeman commits physical aggression against protester, then immediately escalates the conflict by using potentially lethal force; when the crowd reacts, the other police officers – rather than coming to the aid of the victim – form a protective barricade (I call it a “thugscrum”) around the assailant.

Anytime a police officer commits an act of aggressive violence he is engaged in a criminal assault. If his fellow officers won't intervene to stop him, law-abiding citizens have the moral authority to do so. But this simply won't do, tut-tuts the program manual for the national Support Your Local Police campaign: Read more at www.informationliberation.com

 

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Bolivia's President Says U.S. DEA Agents Not Welcome Back

Amplify’d from www.tokeofthetown.com

Bolivia's President Says U.S. DEA Agents Not Welcome Back

The president and vice president of Bolivia both said this week that American drug agents will not be returning to their country, despite the newly announced normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States.

"They repressed us in Bolivia," Morales said. "That has ended."

"For the first time since Bolivia was founded, the United States will now respect Bolivia's rules," Morales said.

​The DEA "was a mechanism of political blackmail," according to Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, and is not welcome back in Bolivia, reports Fox News. Read more at www.tokeofthetown.com

 

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Organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

It's important to remember that historically, organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

Amplify’d from www.globalresearch.ca

It's important to remember that historically, organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

Organized Labour and the Occupations Movement

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon has achieved a stature and longevity unrivaled by recent demonstrations in the United States, and has understandably struck a chord with a wide range of people dismayed by the barbaric level of inequality that is the defining feature of contemporary American society. As the small encampment in lower Manhattan has swelled and spread to cities across the country, the rallying cry of the “99%” has at least momentarily introduced the mainstream discourse to a conception of class, which is usually missing from the political theater showcased on corporate news outlets. The risks posed by an over-reliance on mass media coverage notwithstanding, the organizers’ ability to attract the public eye has been impressive and is an encouraging reminder that most people are yearning for a political vision that resonates with the material anxieties they feel. As the most brutal economic crisis in over a generation grinds on for the third consecutive year, perhaps most surprising is that it has taken so long for such an upsurge to occur.

Staying Power?

Chicago police arrest members of National Nurses United, and tear down their first aid tent at Occupy Chicago. [Photo: National United Nurses.]

Years of Struggle

Here the civil rights movement, which is often invoked in relation to OWS, is instructive. Unmentioned in most grade school lore on the subject, the struggle for racial justice grew out of a deeply rooted organizational apparatus that had been constructed through decades of diligent labour and community organizing. Rosa Parks was a seasoned activist who had been trained at the legendary leftist organizing academy, the Highlander Folk School, and Martin Luther King Jr. owes his beginnings to veteran trade unionists who recruited him. No miracles initiated this historic fight; it was planned and executed by individuals and their organizations who through years of struggle in pursuit of concrete demands had cultivated powerful bases of support in specific communities.

Weakened though they may be, and with all the limitations of their sedentary bureaucracies, unions are still the most democratic membership organizations in the United States, with established activists and infrastructures in cities across the country that possess the practical skills and resources necessary to carry on the fight... Read more at www.globalresearch.ca

 

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