Ecological Politics Beyond Moralism?

The more I encounter Leftist political ecology the more I realize the ubiquity of cognitive biases prioritizing the human. So often such anthropocentrism operates via a deep conceptual and emotive coding for an anesthetizing moralistic frame.

If we genuinely seek to enact ecologies of sufficient practice for human and nonhuman nonzero flourishing it may be required to drastically reduce the intensity of certain cherished humanistic assumptions regarding design-as-politics. For example, hypersensitivity to self-ascribed cultural essentialism may de facto block required but admittedly radical public interventions into existing socio-economic habits and structural relations.

Yet, generating ecologically sufficient practice may mean making very hard choices that may not preserve locally desired or fetishized modes of living and generate much tension and conflict. Traditionally this clash between supposed necessity and self-conservation that seems inherent in complex animal social systems directed such tensions into the activity of war. But if we are going to develop radically divergent and ethical futures that are noncompliant with the thanatologics of capitalism and/or war we are going to need to reframe the context of our deliberative focus and pragmatic actions.

It seems more and more to be the case that we need to intelligently (re)design and (re)build processes of deliberation and negotiated prioritization within technical, expert and citizenry spheres (in everything from personal conversation to academics, media and official institutions) in order to diffuse conflicting tensions as they arise and channel them in ways that allow us to better utilize productive differences for enacting social innovation. Anthropocentric moralism – with all its documented anthropocenities – will never be a substitute for an ecologistics of sensitive negotiation between modes of existence indexed against different scales of complexity ranging from the subatomic to the existentially charged social experiential.

What I seek as an alternative to the self-justifying anthropocentric politics of the contemporary is a cosmopolitics of intelligent design that acknowledges and skillfully adapts to the functional imperatives of complex biosocial niches without over-prioritizing the ideologically coded and arranged/deranged desires of humans at the expense of entire ecosystems.

Organic Intellectualism among the Working Class?

McKenzie Wark on salvage philosophy from his newly published Molecular Red (2015):

In his book The Philosophy of Living Experience Bogdanov is not really trying to write philosophy so much as to hack it, to repurpose it for something other than the making of more philosophy. Philosophy is no longer an end in itself, but a kind of raw material for the design and organizing, not quite of what Foucault called discourses of power/knowledge, but more of practices of laboring/knowing. The projected audience for this writing is not philosophers so much as the organic intellectuals of the working class, exactly the kind of people Bogdanov’s activities as an educator-activist had always addressed. Having clearly read his Nietzsche, Bogdanov’s decision is that if one is to philosophize with a hammer, then this is best done, not with professional philosophers, but with professional hammerers.

To write and speak and work for those that might ignite their own passions towards revolutions in lifestyle and polity..? What a fantastic idea. But are there those willing to read, hear and work with us among the precariat classes and marginal peoples? The "hammerers" I know are more interested in getting more vacation time and keeping their lousy jobs than struggling against authorities or sparking an "organic" uprising. Capitalist realism runs deep as the masses sooth themselves in entertainment and major to minor intoxicants.

Wark thinks the "labor perspective" is a point of leverage, but I'm not so sure.

Addressing the Anthropocene is not something to leave in the hands of those in charge, given just how badly the ruling class of our time has mishandled this end of prehistory, this firstly scientific and now belatedly cultural discovery that we all live in a biosphere in a state of advanced metabolic rift. The challenge then is to construct the labor perspective on the historical tasks of our time. What would it mean to see historical tasks from the point of view of working people of all kinds? How can everyday experiences, technical hacks and even utopian speculations combine in a common cause, where each is a check on certain tendencies of the other?  

Technical knowledge checks the popular sentiment toward purely romantic visions of a world of harmony and butterflies—as if that was a viable plan for seven billion people. Folk knowledge from everyday experience checks the tendency of technical knowledge to imagine sweeping plans without thought for the particular consequences—like diverting the waters of the Aral Sea. Utopian speculations are that secret heliotropism which orients action and invention toward a sun now regarded with more caution and respect than it once was. There is no other world, but it can’t be this one

on clear and present morality

In “Their Morals and Ours”, Leon Trotsky laid out some sobering reflections on justification and sentiment:

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man [sic] over nature and to the abolition of the power of man [sic] over man [sic]…  

Morality is one of the ideological functions in this struggle. The ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality. It pursues the idea of the “greatest possible happiness” not for the majority but for a small and ever diminishing minority. Such a regime could not have endured for even a week through force alone. It needs the cement of morality. The mixing of this cement constitutes the profession of the petty-bourgeois theoreticians, and moralists. They dabble in all colors of the rainbow but in the final instance remain apostles of slavery and submission.

The dabbling and application of moral sentiments is the emotive’s approach to ethical deliberation and action. Without clear and present investigation - critical as well as syncretic - we humans become slaves to the dominant ideologies (as infomatic regimes) infusing current institutions of extraction and alienation.

And for what? For whom? Know your enemy, both within and beyond.

the revolution will be commercialized

by Jeff S-L (Az)

U.S Senator Elizabeth Warren on the Keystone Pipeline

Senator Warren is a baddass. (Why doesn't she run for President?!) In the following short video Warren calls out the Canadian oil industry, and Transcanada in particular who recently spent over 7 million dollars on lobbying U.S politicians directly, and argues that an alternative governmental focus on infrastructure would do much more for the U.S economy and the American people than pushing through the Keystone XL mega-project. The recent intense focus on ramming the pipeline through has to do with POWER and elites doing favours for elites, plain and simple.

Ecologies of Imaginal Space

"If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.

The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.

To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars." [source]

-- Arundhati Roy

“This is not about getting back to nature.
It is about understanding we’ve never left.”
-- Sierra Club poster

Things Will Not Be So Easy

I truly enjoy how hollywood makes profit by projecting the fears of its own established cultural elites. I don't even mind when such profits are made by making a caricature of the very real and raw impulses motivating many of us who are increasingly organizing to confront those elites - impulses rooted in an organic sense of complete disgust with a mainstream that is fundamentally a manufactured pseudo-civilization with corporate oligarchs and govern-mental disfunction firmly at its core.

I just watched the following trailer for the new film "The East": "a story centered on contract worker who is tasked with infiltrating an anarchist group, only to find herself falling for its leader." The film features actors Ellen Page, Alexander Skarsgård and Brit Marling, and directed by Zal Batmanglij. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2013.

The film's co-writer and star Brit Marling said the following in relation to the film: "Multinational corporations are outside of the purview of any nation-state. These are the entities that are shaping and running the world... The modern anarchy movement is about rebelling against the corporate structure."

Check it out:



Any comments?

#darkestbeforethestorm 

First Nations Rising?

"When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is, for the people and for each segment of the population, the most sacred of rights and the most fundamental of duties." 

- Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 24 June 1793

Hundreds of First Nations people gathered yesterday for Idle No More, a national day of protest against the Canadian federal government's Bill C-45 (the so-called "Jobs and Growth Act") which intentionally attempts to supersede and violate long-standing treaty rights in oder to promote 'ecnomic growth' and private business interests.

The omnibus legislation contains changes to the Indian Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act impacting all areas of land and water, and effectively removing all legal grounds for First Nations communities to determine what happens within their territories.

Crystal Lameman with the Beaver Lake First Nation argues that the Harper government has ignored its duty to consult with First Nations on the changes:

"In our treaty, it says that we will always be able to go to the land to subsist, but when you are pulling fish from the lake that have cancers hanging off of them, and that the migration pattern of the Woodland caribou are being affected, that's our basic human rights being violated."

Protests were also held in other Canadian cities including Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Toronto.



 SAMSON CREE FIRST NATION PRESS RELEASE:

“Pipes will be lifted in support of Idle No More; this pipe ceremony will signify peace between two Nations and with the Creator. The presence of the pipe signifies the pipe laws of gentleness, compassion and mutual respect.”

The Cree of Maskwacis will be holding a pipe ceremony and peaceful demonstration on Hwy 2A at Maskwacis. For that purpose, a portion of the main highway between the Highway 611 West and Pe Sakastew Correctional Centre will be blocked between 11:15 am and 12:15 pm. 

Alternate routes will be posted for those travelers who are not able to stay and support the peaceful demonstration.  

We are taking this opportunity, coinciding with 12th hour of the 12th day of December 2012, to bring awareness to First Nations’ opposition to legislation proposed by the Harper government. 

We also want people to bring attention to the hunger strike started on Tuesday, December 11, 2012, by Chief Theresa Spence, Attawapiskat First Nation, a First Nation in northern Ontario, who has ‘vowed to ‘die’ for her people’. She has been quoted as saying: “I am willing to die for my people because the pain is too much and it’s time for the government to realize what it’s doing to us.”  

In the past term of office, the Harper government has introduced several pieces of legislation in the House of Commons and the Senate which will significantly impact the lives of First Nations’ people across Canada. Not only has this legislation been introduced without any real participation by the people affected by the legislation, it is being ‘fast-tracked’ through the House of Commons and the Senate.  

When First Nations people agreed to share their lands and resources with ‘newcomers’, First Nations could not have foreseen that, in time, not only would First Nations become landless, but that First Nations would have to conform to the ideologies, and world views of the ‘visitors’. That time has come to pass. Despite the adoption of the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, by the United Nations and subsequent ratification in Canada, Canada is unilaterally passing laws governing the First Nations without the free, prior and informed consent of the First Nations people.

The bills before the House of Commons and the Senate directly undermines First Nations’ right of self-determination, and subjugates First Nations people to a legal and political system that has not served the collective interests of First Nations.  

In Samson Cree Nation’s letter to the Member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, Samson Cree Nation lobbied the MP to reject the proposed legislation, bring these matters to the grass roots people, and to obtain First Nations support for legislation that will directly affect the lives and future of First Nations before endorsing it in the House of Commons.

#IdleNoMore

The Communist Manifesto

by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

(Full Version, English)

Spread Anarchy, Live Communism?

The question of anarchism as a viable poltical stance has always bothered me. I tend towards a more communistic, collectivist political perspective, but perhaps what is called for under the contemporary conditions is something more deconstructive and wild? This remains an open question for me.

Audio from day two of the 2011 symposium The Anarchist Turn:

Spread Anarchy, Live Communism
By The Invisible Committee

LISTEN HERE:

Information about the symposium from the conference organizers:

For a long time, the word ‘anarchist’ has been used as an insult. This is because, at least since Thomas Hobbes, the concept of anarchy has been extended from its etymological meaning (absence of centralized government) to that of pure disorder – the idea being that, without a sovereign state, the life of individuals can only be brutish, miserable, and chaotic. This move was certainly functional to the ideological justification of modern sovereign states, but not to an understanding of what anarchy might be.

In the last decade, this caricature of anarchy has begun to crack. Globalization and the social movements it spawned seem to have proved what anarchists have long been advocating: an anarchical order is not just desirable, but also feasible. This has led to a revitalized interest in the subterranean anarchist tradition and its understanding of anarchy as collective self-organization without centralized authority. But the ban on ‘anarchism’ has not yet been lifted.

The aim of this conference is to argue for an ‘anarchist turn’ in political philosophy. We want to discuss the anarchist hypothesis with specific reference to the philosophical tradition in its many historical and geographical variants, but also in relation to other disciplines like politics, anthropology, economics, history and sociology. By bringing together academics and activists, past and present, this conference will assess the nature and effectiveness of anarchist politics in our times.

Speakers: Miguel Abensour (Paris VII), Cinzia Arruzza (New School), Banu Bargu (New School), Chiara Bottici (New School), Judith Butler (UC Berkeley), Laura Corradi (Calabria), Stephen Duncombe (NYU), Todd May (Clemson), Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths), Mitchell Verter (New School), Stephanie Wakefield (CUNY), as well as writers such as Andrej Grubačić , Cindy Milstein, Ben Morea from Black Mask and alleged authors of The Coming Insurrection.

Learn More: Here

Goldman Sachs is a Financial Terrorist Organization

Goldman Sachs is an organization of financial terrorists who have co-opted the American government. They have extorted the U.S congress, emptied the treasury coffers and financed the exploitation of people and markets all over this planet. They contribute nothing but fraud and destruction to the project of civilization. Why are Americans still putting up with this company?

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and is headquartered at 200 West Street in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City, with additional offices in international financial centres.

Former employees include Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively, as well as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada since 2008, Mario Draghi, governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister, and former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson is the current chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, despite President Barack Obama's campaign promise that he would limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration.[source]

In February 2011, the Washington Examiner reported that Goldman Sachs was "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" and that its "CEO Lloyd Blankfein has visited the White House 10 times."[source]

During the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, Goldman was able to profit from the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by short-selling subprime mortgage-backed securities. Two Goldman traders, Michael Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, are credited with bearing responsibility for the firm's large profits during America's sub-prime mortgage crisis.[source] The pair, members of Goldman's structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage-related securities. [source]

Here is Former Attorney General of New York Elliot Spitzer breaking it down on CNN: 

And Max Keiser on French TV giving his take:

  

The trailer for the documentary INSIDE JOB: 

Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: On History

In the video below filmmaker Oliver Stone and prominent intellectual and activist Tariq Ali engage in a fascinating discussion on U.S history, culture and foreign affairs in front of an audience at the New York Public Library on January 1, 2012.

 


From the New York Pubic Library: 

ON HISTORY - Pakistani writer and filmmaker TARIQ ALI and film director OLIVER STONE will continue their ongoing discourse about "forgotten--or deliberately buried--episodes" from American history from the US intervention against the Russian Revolution to the ongoing interference of the United States in Pakistani political affairs. In their recent public dialogue, On History, Oliver Stone asks, according to Jon Wiener, "smart questions about the rise and fall of the United States and its empire in the 20th century." In this conversation, the tables are turned as we ask Tariq Ali to kick off with some questions for Oliver Stone, leading into a conversation between them on politics, film, and the untold history of the nation.

Slavoj Žižek: Catastrophic But Not Serious

...

Slavoj Zizek: Catastrophic But Not Serious from The Graduate Center, CUNY on FORA.tv

Location: New York, NY / Event Date: 04.04.11 

Summary: The Committee on Globalization and Social Change will launch with a special lecture by philosopher and critic Slavoj Zizek who will speak on "The Situation Is Catastrophic, but Not Serious." This alleged message of the Austrian military headquarters during WWI renders perfectly our attitude towards the ongoing crisis: we are aware of the looming (ecological, social) catastrophes, but we somehow don't take them seriously. What ideology sustains such an attitude?

[ h/t DMF ]

The End of Capitalism?

WOW. That is all I have to say about a recent post at Indecent Bazaar entitled, "The End of Capitalism". Therein the author lays bare the immediate political implications of trying to better understand the amazing complexity inherent to all social assemblages. The author (who are you?) calls upon important work done by J.K. Gibson-Graham and Manuel DeLanda.

I honestly could not articulate a better understanding of the multiplicity of social systems (and indeed all assemblages) at various scales, as well as the need for analytical specificity in terms of both general ontology and political practice.

Below is my favourite passage from the post, but please do go read the entire piece for yourself:

It is illegitimate and inaccurate to speak of capitalism in terms of a unifying entity (in the same way it would be to speak of the US as a Christian nation, or a heterosexual one) because such social descriptors erase and obscure differences. While feminists have long departed from “holistic expressions for social structure”, conceptions of capitalism as hegemonic, ubiquitous, systematic and so on are still prevalent and resilient. It follows from this virtually unquestioned view of capitalism as the dominant form of economy that noncapitalist and anti-capitalist sites come to inhabit the social margins in the realm of experiment (as recently illustrated over at Necessary Agitation). As J.K. Gibson-Graham contend: “it is the way capitalism has been ‘thought’ that has made it so difficult for people to imagine its supersession.” (There is little doubt that the archive of my blog unflatteringly reflects the same point). As the authors go on to argue, what needs to be fostered instead is a theory of “economic difference;” conditions under which the economy might be “less subject to definitional closure,” whose identity is not fixed or singular. The alternative of “theorizing economic difference, of supplanting the discourse of capitalist hegemony with a plurality and heterogeneity of economic forms” is akin to what Manuel DeLanda attempts in ‘Deleuze, Materialism and Politics’. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of double articulation (the selection of materials out of a wide set of possibilities—first articulation—and the arrangement of these loosely ordered materials into a more stable form—second articulation) with which to conceptualize the process through which material form and identity are generated, DeLanda extends this micro-macro distinction to strata operating at infinitely different scales (rather than only two levels of scale: ‘the molecular’ and ‘the molar’). According to DeLanda, “double articulation is, in its simplest version, the process of joining parts to yield a whole with properties of its own. Since most component parts are smaller than the whole they compose, the part-to-whole relation is a relation between small and large scales.” It would be a mistake, however, to treat the macro and micro as absolute scales. There are never only two scales operating in material or social processes: every entity that is perceived as an autonomous whole is itself populated by component parts, and those parts in turn have their own parts…. “A more adequate approach,” argues DeLanda, “would be to treat them as relative to a particular scale.” For this reason it is problematic to employ terms like ‘society as a whole’ in our theorizing, for the largest entities are every bit as singular and unique as the smallest. “In general, what needs to be excluded from a materialist social ontology are vague, reified terms like ‘society’ (or ‘the market’, ‘the state’, etc.) Only hacceities (individual singularities) operating at different spatio-temporal scales should be legitimate entities in this ontology.”

Yeah, I know, pretty damn awesome...

War Is a Racket

In 1935 retired U.S Army General Smedley D. Butler published a book entitled ‘War Is A Racket’ in which he lays bare the economic profiteering and commercial nature of publicly funded state warfare. In the book Butler was shockingly frank about his experience as a career military officer in the midst of a frenzy of wealthy elites clamoring to make profit from all sides of some of the earths most devastating conflicts.

The work is divided into five chapters:

1. War is a racket
2. Who makes the profits?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. How to smash this racket!
5. To hell with war!

In an often cited quote from the book Butler says:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Butler then summarizes the main points of his book in the following key passage:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

read the entire book: Here

The Story of Broke

From The Story of Stuff Project:

"THE STORY OF BROKE - The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better."

Watch More : Here

Gandhi and the Politics of Non-Violence

The video below is a teach-in presented by Professor Snehal Shingavi @ #OccupyAustin. His talk goes into the history of the India Liberation movement and critically examines the role Gandhi played in it. If we want to effectively call upon the mythos of the Mahatma to affect social change we need to seek honesty and build a space of understanding that compares and illuminates key tactics and strategies against ruling classes, instead of moralistically dismissing those tactics deemed “violent”. Dogmatic pacifists please take note!

'Gandhi and the Politics of Non-Violence'

by Professor Snehal Shingavi at #OccupyAustin:

Thank You #OWS!

“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do! . . . 

Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.”

- R.W Emerson, from "The Transcendentalist, a Lecture Read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842."

Jeffrey Sachs Message to Wall Street

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development, Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and the founder and co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and disease by the year 2015.

Sachs has been strongly criticized for past sympathies for privatization and neoliberal economic ideology, as well as his role in helping American business elites plunder the Russian economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sachs was an adviser to Eastern European governments in the implementation of so-called “economic shock therapy” during the transition from communism to a capitalist market system.

Since that time, and as a result of the overwhelming evidence that neo-liberal policies only advantage established economic powers, Sachs has increasingly advocated for more prudent regulatory practices and the building of an international system of aid and economic mutualism between wealthy nations and institutions and periphery populations in vulnerable geopolitical regions. Sachs now argues for what he calls in his most recent book, The Price of Civilization, a "mixed economy".

Sachs’ recent article in the Huffington Post is a surprisingly frank characterization of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, considering the fairly mainstream financial circles he operates within. Below are a few excerpts from the article, but I urge everyone to read the entire piece:

The protestors are not envious of wealth, but sick of corporate lies, cheating, and unethical behavior. They are sick of corporate lobbying that led to the reckless deregulation of financial markets; they are sick of Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal asking for trillions of dollars of near-zero-interest loans and bailout money for the banks, but then fighting against unemployment insurance and health coverage for those drowning in the wake of the financial crisis; they are sick of absurdly low tax rates for hedge-fund managers; they are sick of Rupert Murdoch and his henchman David Koch trying to peddle the Canada-to-Gulf Keystone oil pipeline as an honest and environmentally sound business deal, when in fact it would unleash one of the world's dirtiest and most destructive energy sources, Canada's oil sands, so that Koch can profit while the world suffers…

Here, then, Wall Street and Big Oil, is what it comes down to. The protesters are no longer giving you a free ride, in which you can set the regulations, set your mega-pay, hide your money in tax havens, enjoy sweet tax rates at the hands of ever-willing politicians, and await your bailouts as needed. The days of lawlessness and greed are coming to an end. Just as the Gilded Age turned into the Progressive Era, just as the Roaring Twenties and its excesses turned into the New Deal, be sure that the era of mega-greed is going to turn into an era of renewed accountability, lawfulness, modest compensation, honest taxation, and government by the people rather than by the banks.

Go read the entire article: here.

[ h/t Edward Berge ]

UPDATE OCT 21.2011:

Jeffrey Sachs at #OccupyWallStreet

Chris Hedges in Times Square, October 15, 2011

On October 15th Occupy TVNY met with Pullitzer prize-winning author and journalist Chris Hedges in Times Square, New York City where tens of thousands of people assembled on a global day of action. Chris shares his feelings on where the Occupy movement has come from and where it is heading.