Our Man In Sudan

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

An Ex-Wall Street Banker Jets Off To South Sudan To Show How Investors Are Rushing To Africa In A Modern-Day Land-Grab.

This film follows former Wall Street banker, Phil Heilberg, who reveals what goes on behind the scenes in the modern-day version of land grabs.

Since the collapse of the global financial markets, Western investors have been looking for lucrative opportunities, especially in countries with internal conflict, such as Sudan.

With an increasing world population and the high price of raw materials, agricultural land is seen as a safe bet.

But with so much cheap land on offer, foreign speculators are flocking to Africa.

Man's Insatiable Greed

By "CavalierZee"

A tribal elder tells a story to his people around a campfire: 

"And a Man sat alone, drenched deep in sadness. And all the animals drew near to him and said, “We do not like to see you so sad. Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it.” 

The Man said, “I want to have good sight.” The vulture replied, “You shall have mine.” 

The Man said, “I want to be strong.” The jaguar said, “You shall be strong like me.” 

Then the Man said, “I long to know the secrets of the earth.” The serpent replied, “I will show them to you.” 

And so it went with all the animals. And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give, he left.

 Then the owl said to the other animals, “Now the Man knows much, he’ll be able to do many things. Suddenly I am afraid.” 

The deer said, “The Man has all that he needs. Now his sadness will stop.” 

But the owl replied, “No. I saw a hole in the Man, deep like a hunger he will never fill. It is what makes him sad and what makes him want. He will go on taking and taking, until one day the World will say, ‘I am no more and I have nothing left to give.’”

[Excerpt from the 2006 film Apocalypto by Mel Gibson. The villagers surround one of the village elders who tells a story of mankind and their insatiable greed.]

Occupy Phase Two

Occupy New York must create meaningful actions that will actually have a concrete impact, says Hamm [GALLO/GETTY]


What's Next For New York? 

By Nikolas Kozloff 
Last Modified: 10 Feb 2012 13:51 
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

New York, NY - In the wake of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's crackdown on the Occupy movement in Lower Manhattan, there has been a slight lull in activist activity. Yet recently, with disturbances breaking out in the city of Oakland, California, some might have wondered whether Occupy was about to enter "phase two". When activists there attempted to take over a vacant building, the police used teargas and rubber bullets against the protesters, and 400 were arrested. A solidarity march was called the very next day in Lower Manhattan, and as protesters scuffled with police, 12 were arrested there.

In-depth coverage of the global movement

Are these developments indicative of a roller coaster political season to come? I recently sat down with Ted Hamm, founding editor of the Brooklyn Rail, a magazine which covers local arts and politics. In addition to his duties at the Rail, Hamm is associate professor of urban studies at Metropolitan College, conveniently located near to the original Occupy encampment in Zucotti Park.

Nikolas Kozloff: From the very outset of the Occupy movement, there's been a kind of synergy between Oakland and New York. While things have seemingly died down here as of late, Oakland is once again in the headlines. What are the commonalities between the two cities in terms of their respective urban politics and social fabrics, and do you think New York's Occupy movement will once again become more assertive as a result of protest on the west coast?

Ted Hamm: Well, one interesting comparison has to do with the co-operative movement which exists on both coasts and, actually, one of the larger functioning co-ops is the Park Slope Food Co-op in the outer borough of Brooklyn. I would say there is a radical labour tradition in Oakland as well as a Bay Area activist tradition, and that radical tradition exists here in New York to a certain extent - though it's more difficult to set up co-operative living here because of the high cost of living. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to establish co-operative type living arrangements in New York. For example, during one recent protest in the area of East New York, where an occupy foreclosure set up shop in someone's home. Another interesting point of comparison is labour: a lot of people here in New York are talking about setting up strikes or walkouts on May 1, or May Day. But legally, organised labour can't call for a general strike. And so my question is whether there is support for a general strike here in New York, which would be comparable to pro-labour sentiment in Oakland. Indeed, just recently Oakland launched its own general strike, and I wonder how many people would actually turn out for such an action here in New York? It could wind up simply being a militant cadre of activists who aren't officially going on strike because they're either in school or freelancing. To my mind, that would be a rather lacklustre outcome: a general strike isn't much of a success unless a lot of people participate.

NK: I have the impression that protests have been more racially diverse in Oakland than in New York. Here at Metropolitan College, you teach many students of colour and I wonder what their reaction was to the protests. Could the Occupy movement do a better job of attracting a more diverse crowd?

TH: One of the things I've heard from my students is that there is good reason to avoid the protests. There's unease about coming into contact with the police if you have a criminal record. Whether it's simply a trivial charge that you neglected to clear up in court, a more serious arrest record or you're on probation or parole, you need to steer clear of situations where the police are aggressively arresting people. Also, when you go to protest now in the city you never know if you're going to be caught up in orange netting as a mere bystander. You could be on the wrong block at the wrong time. The police have byzantine crowd control tactics and you can never be sure where you stand. In addition, Barack Obama is probably still pretty popular within the African-American community in the city. If you examined a cross section of black New Yorkers they would probably say "why should we be protesting when he's in control?" On the other hand, we can't discount the role of such groups as Occupy the Hood. Students at my own school started this offshoot of the original Occupy movement because they felt that African-Americans weren't sufficiently represented amongst the activist community. One thing that people of colour can bring to these protests is their own day-to-day experience with the police. Indeed, some of my students have actual members of their family working within the police force itself.

NK: At the national level, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had difficulty, overcoming the perception that he is "Mr one per cent", and this could be his Achilles Heel come the fall election. In this sense, it could be said that Occupy has helped to change the political conversation in this country. But, do you believe Occupy will change the nature of local politics too, making it more and more difficult for super wealthy individuals such as Mayor Bloomberg to dominate City Hall? What about the New York mayoral election of 2013 - do you think candidates will strike a more populist tone?

TH: I think New York candidates will put forth a critique which leans towards populism in 2013, perhaps raising such issues as a living wage and renewal of rent control. Right now, Bloomberg seems to be supporting City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Through Bloomberg's support, Quinn's hoping to get the backing of the elite - and, in particular, the real estate interests, which are in turn linked to the construction industry. She could also appeal to the more conservative unions, such as those of police and firefighters, which are influential come election time. Quinn may position herself as someone who is sympathetic to the 99 per cent, but also willing to work with the one per cent. In the long term, however, I think activists are going to have to figure out a way to put issues on the table effectively because few within the elite are going to be sympathetic towards Occupy. Fundamentally, people need to be realistic about the constraints of city government, and to be honest the City Council doesn't have much power. And let's say Quinn did run a populist campaign and even got elected - what could she do to further social justice? Perhaps the biggest power that she would have is the bully pulpit. But then, when you get into pressing needs like taxing financial transactions - that is something that must happen at the state level. Launching an investigation of Wall Street, meanwhile, corresponds to the office of the state's Attorney General.

NK: To be sure, Occupy has its own working groups dedicated to arts and culture, yet I wonder whether you think the activists' efforts in this regard have been effective from where you stand at the Rail, a publication which is very much on top of the New York arts scene.

TH: Personally, I don't think that occupying art galleries or the Museum of Modern Art is really going to make much of a difference. The art world is institutionally driven and activists won't be able to transform that dynamic very easily. On the other hand, the more artists participate in movement politics, the better. 

NK: Your magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, deals with local politics in the borough of Brooklyn which is larger, more diverse and more populous than Manhattan. In a sense it is a little ironic that Occupy should have emerged in Manhattan - which is a wealthy enclave - and not in Brooklyn. How should activists appeal to people in the outer boroughs?

TH: There are important landmarks in Brooklyn such as the Brooklyn Bridge, but in general the borough lacks those larger-than-life symbolic sites - such as Wall Street - where activists can gather. Nevertheless, a lot of the younger protesters from Occupy are coming out of Brooklyn neighbourhoods like Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick. And to be fair, there have been some local actions in Brooklyn, bubbling beneath the surface. My concern, however, is that smaller actions haven't been very coherent. Just the other night, for example, activists held a party in Williamsburg to protest property relations. They held the party in a vacant condo which hadn't sold yet, due to the financial crash of 2008. Then the cops showed up and the protesters got into a melee with them. To me it sounded more like mayhem than any organised or coherent message. The challenge then for Occupy New York is to create meaningful actions which will actually have a concrete impact.

Nikolas Kozloff is the founder of the Revolutionary Handbook website. Ted Hamm is the founding editor of arts and politics magazine Brooklyn Rail.

Predatory Capitalism

Posted by Guest Blogger "Sayf Maslul"


"I don't think the failure is capitalism. I think it's a specific kind of capitalism that we have developed. We have created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory kind of capitalism has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and... and, a very, very dangerous world." [John Perkins]

An animated interview of John Perkins, author of 'HoodWinked' and 'Confessions Of An Economic Hitman' 
Copyright of the audio belongs to John Perkins.

For more visit www.studiojoho.com 
email info@studiojoho.com

Grassroots Solutions To American Crises

"What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them."


-- Maximillien Robespierre

By BENJAMIN DANGL
Bastille Day Edition
July 14, 2011
Courtesy Of "Counter Punch"



From Collapse To Action

When the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression hit the US on September 15, 2008, filmmakers Sílvia Leindecker and Michael Fox began a journey across the country to see how the economy was impacting people's lives. Their interviews, which span two years and nearly 40 states, draw from farmers, truck drivers, homeless people, workers, immigrants and more. The result is the documentary Crossing the American Crises: From Collapse To Action, a film full of desperation, hope and grassroots solutions.

Leindecker and Fox are the makers of the earlier documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas, and Fox was an editor of the book Venezuela Speaks!: Voices From The Grassroots. Like these earlier works, Crossing the American Crises highlights the voices of people participating in grassroots activism and everyday struggles for a better world.

The first stop of their trip is Detroit, where the camera cuts to empty store fronts and factories. "Detroit is what it is because of industry and the industrial revolution, and capitalism, and so-called democracy and how all those failed. And this is what we have left with it," Jon Blount of the activist collective Detroit Summer tells Leindecker and Fox. Such bits of hard-won insight from streets, factory floors and living rooms across America are interspersed throughout the film.

The next visit is to the Rosebud Lakota Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where they speak with Alfred Bone Shirt. "We're seeing that there's asegment of our society that feel we're left out, neglected, abused; rights are violated. We're in a depression down here so bad that people just wanna give up." His words are underscored by footage of the reservation itself, a place crushed by economic depression.

After stops in Utah, Oakland and Los Angeles, they head out onto Route 66, where, Fox tells the camera they want to "see the direct effects on the local community." And indeed, that is what they find at nearly every stop in their tour; very real life stories of how the US economy is making life difficult for people from coast to coast and everywhere in between.

In New Orleans, they speak with people in the Lower 9th Ward, a neighborhood that was destroyed by Katrina in 2005. Robert Green and his family lived in this community for 38 years before Katrina hit, and at the time of the shooting of the film they were still living in a FEMA trailer. Green is interviewed with his daughter and wife next to a string of empty lots – places where his neighbors' homes used to be located before the storm destroyed them.

Fox asks Green what he thinks about the government bailout, the major issue of the day. Green tells him, "It's ironic that it only took [the government] two weeks to issue a $700 billion check. It took them three years after Katrina and this is what you see." He pointed to the empty lots, saying the names of the families that used to live there. "So basically every house, every family that's gone actually was a family that should be here now. And if they would have been given the money in two weeks like the way they did in Congress, the way they did in Wall Street, then every last one of these families would have rebuilt their houses, and this whole Gulf Coast area would have been rebuilt because everybody in the Gulf Coast is basically like the people down here: family first."

This story conveys a sentiment shared by many of the interviewees in this film: outrage at the disparity between the government's concern for Wall Street over the people bearing the everyday grind of the crisis.

Crossing the American Crises then turns to the hope people felt in the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Yet after the election, the camera cuts to a stream of grim economic news, and stories of people struggling to make ends meet. One college graduate appearing in the film went through 109 job interviews before finally finding a very low-paying position at Staples. A homeless man on the Gulf Coast tells Fox and Leindeker he'll ask them for money after the interview so he can get some lunch.

On a cold, snowy street corner in New York City, they interview John Lambertus, a homeless man who lost his job in May of 2008 and couldn't find new work. Lambertus points to a plastic bag he's carrying, saying, "You see this? This is my blanket, another jacket in case this one gets messed up, and another pair of pants – and that's my situation." He worked in a printing press for thirty years before losing his job. "I'll be 51 in April and I'm in the street," he says, the cold wind thundering against the microphone.

So what is to be done with all of this bleak news from the American crises? That leads to the second part of the film: Action. Crossing the American Crises goes on to include many solutions to these economic and social problems, focusing on inspiring stories of grassroots alternatives and responses.

There is the Vermont Workers' Center fighting for affordable healthcare for all, the Green Worker Cooperative in the Bronx that sells recycled building materials, the Santa Fe Alliance in New Mexico advocating for local producers and businesses over tax-dodging multinational chains, and the Iraq Veterans Against the War struggling for veterans' benefits. There are stories of people working for affordable housing, jobs, better working conditions, improved public transportation and prison justice.

These groups are largely led by the people who are impacted the most by these various crises. Organizers are meeting these challenges in states across the country. "Organizing is the key! Organizing is the key!" JoAnn Watson from the Detroit Council tells a boisterous crowd at the US Social Forum in her city.

Alongside these stories of hopeful organizing is a vision for a better world. "The people have to act through their own organizations to implement their vision of what life should be like," explains Kathleeen Cleaver, a law professor at Yale University.

That's a central message of this film – that when the politicians, banks, bosses and economy fail to work for the people, it's the people that have to form the backbone of movements for economic justice, peace and equality and rights. In the midst of these crises, those movements are already thriving across the US today.

As Robert Green from the Lower 9th Ward says, "Basically, we need to start taking back our government, taking back our taxes, start taking back our control from our elected officials because they're not putting us first."

Such insight from people across the country makes Crossing the American Crises an impressive film that captures the spirit of America today. Its stories of human hardship, solidarity and hope paint a portrait of America that is both heart-breaking and inspiring. This documentary is a powerful reminder of the countless social movements working each day to transform this country, from the fields of Oklahoma to the streets of New Orleans.

Benjamin Dangl is currently based in Paraguay and is the author of "The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia" (AK Press) andDancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press). Email: Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com.

Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide

Stephen A. Schwarzman arrives for his 60th birthday party on Park Avenue, February 13, 2007 in New York City.

Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images

By Matt Taibbi
POSTED: JULY 13, 10:36 AM ET
Courtesy Of "Rolling Stone"

Courtesy of good friend and Supreme Court of Assholedom justice David Sirota comes this revolting list of Marie Antoinettoid moments from recent years, in an article called "The New 'Let Them Eat Cake!'"

Some of the moments on the list are easily recalled – Berkshire Hathaway gazillionaire Charlie Munger's famous "suck it up and cope" quote, coming from a guy whose company was heavily invested in bailed-out banks, was an obvious inclusion – but others are quite shocking.

For instance, I was completely floored by the New York Times' pseudo-ironic take on the government's response to the financial crisis, a piece entitled "You Try to Live on $500K in This Town."

This came at a time when President Obama was considering curtailing compensation for bailed-out bankers at $500,000. The piece was sort of meant to be taken half as a joke, but it is not hard to detect an element of demented earnestness in the fashion section article, an honest argument that with mortgages and private school tuition and co-op fees and taxes, it really was very hard for a certain kind of New Yorker to get by on half a million a year.

The proposed salary cap -- remember, this cap was only going to be for banks that had fucked up badly enough to need a federal bailout -- became the cassus belli for a propaganda war launched from the general direction of Wall Street, where the notion that the government should restrict the salaries of exactly the irresponsible greedheads who caused a global financial crisis was met with blunt outrage.

Sirota's list highlights another bizarre aspect of the $500k story. During the debate over the proposed cap, one of the things we started to hear from the Antoinette class was a general sense of wonder at the notion that anyone considered them rich. It turns out that a great many of the people who make big six-figure incomes consider themselves middle class. A University of Chicago professor arguing against the repeal of the Bush tax cuts made waves by saying he was "just getting by" with his $250,000 income, while ABC's Charlie Gibson and CNN reporter Kiran Chetry in recent years suggested that $200-$250,000 is middle class (Chetry's exact quote was that "in some parts of the country," $250K "is middle class").

All of this is a testament to the amazing (and rapidly expanding) cultural divide that exists in this country, where the poor and the rich seldom cross paths at all, and the rich, in particular, simply have no concept what being broke and poor really means. It is true that if you make $300,000 in America, you won't feel like you're so very rich once you get finished paying your taxes, your mortgage, your medical bills and so on.

For this reason, a lot of people who make that kind of money believe they are the modern middle class: house in the burbs, a car, a kid in college, a trip to Europe once a year, what's the big deal? They'd be right, were it not for the relative comparison -- for the fact that out there, in that thin little ithsmus between the Upper East Side and Beverly Hills, things are so fucked that public school teachers and garbagemen making $60k with benefits are being targeted with pitchfork-bearing mobs as paragons of greed and excess. Wealth, in places outside Manhattan, southern California, northern Virginia and a few other locales, is rapidly becoming defined as belonging to anyone who has any form of job security at all. Any kind of retirement plan, or better-than-minimum health coverage, is also increasingly looked at as an upper-class affectation.

That the Tea Party and their Republican allies in congress have so successfully made government workers with their New Deal benefits out to be the kulak class of modern America says a lot about the unique brand of two-way class blindness we have in this country. It's not just that the rich don't know the poor exist, and genuinely think a half a million a year is "not a lot of money," as one "compensation consultant" told the New York Times after the crash.

It also works the other way -- the poor have no idea what real rich people are like. They apparently never see them, which is why the political champions of middle America are at this very minute campaigning in congress to extract more revenue from elderly retirees and broke-ass students while simultaneously fighting to preserve a slew of tax loopholes for the rich, including the carried-interest tax break that allows hedge fund billionaires to pay about half the tax rate of most Americans.

This is also going on because both parties are betraying the desires of the actual voters, who by and large actually do favor taxing the wealthy (they favor it intellectually anyway, when asked by pollsters). But we don't see mobs on the street demanding Stevie Cohen and John Paulson and George Soros give up their special 15 percent tax rate, because no actual people have ever seen Stevie Cohen, John Paulson or George Soros in the wild.

To most people, the undeserving rich guy is the ex-police lieutenant down the street who's been collecting a six-figure pension for years after spending two decades writing traffic tickets before retiring at 43. Seeing that guy lounging in the dugout pool you paid for with your constantly rising property taxes is enough to piss anyone off, which is why it's not hard to understand where a lot of that Tea Party anger is coming from.

But if you want to see a real asshole, you have to somehow get invited to things like the $5 million birthday party of another guy on Sirota's list, private equity creep Steven Schwarzman. After throwing his elaborate fete for himself, Schwarzman -- who is said to make $400 million a year, and made $600 million when his company went public -- compared Barack Obama to Hitler for even considering rolling back his carried-interest exemption, which, again, allows him to pay 15% taxes while some of the rest of us pay twice that or more. "It's a war," he said. "It's like when Hitler invaded Poland."

If you think your local Andy Griffith is a greedy pig because he retired in his forties and built an addition to his garage with your tax money, try hanging out with a guy who eats $400 crabs, throws himself $5 million parties where he is serenaded by Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle (who sang "Happy Birthday"), and then compares the president to Hitler when word leaks out that he might have to pay taxes at the same rate as a firefighter or a kindergarten teacher.

But America never gets to meet that guy, because all of those parties are invite-only, and the only reporters that go tend to do so with kneepads on -- like the extraordinary Andrew Ross Sorkin, who as Sirota notes, predictably wrote a slurpilicious "In Defense of Schwarzman" piece after the event (his thesis, to the extent that I could make it out, seemed to be that there are even bigger assholes than Schwarzman). As a result, the popular outrage gets steered toward state employees greedily living off their own pensions, not toward the truly deserving targets hiding in the Hamptons and Gstaad and St. Tropez.

Anyway, definitely advise checking out David's piece. You'll be grinding your teeth by the time you finish.