All Blog Posts (138)

I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.

"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO," he said. "I think that's funny."

"Okay, I'll bite," I said.…

-By Glenn Greenwald

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past…

A Few Companies Have Power Over Most of the Real Economy

The idea that the few dominate the many will not come as news to those gathered either to…

On October 3rd, protesters at Occupy Wall Street failed to march. Instead they clumsily lurched. With white painted faces, glazed looks and dollar bills hanging out of some mouths, protesters chanted “I smell money, I smell money…” It was Corporate Zombie Day. Scenes like this and the sight of Guy Fawkes masks, clown suits, drumming circles and surrealistic posters all over the country have left many commentators scratching their heads. Is th…

Seven Defects of American Governance – Part 1 

Beyond the Magnificent Seven, there are a bunch of other sevens; the seven climes, the seven continents, the feast of the seven fishes, the seven dwarfs, the seven deadly sins, the seven sacraments, the seven seas, the seven seals with their seven secrets, the seven virtues and the Seven Wonders of the World to name at least most of them. 

To these I have another seven; our federal government's policies of war and empire,…

The Seven Defects of American Governance 

Just as there are seven dwarfs, seven virtues, and seven deadly sins there are seven major policy defects of American governance; the policies of war, empire, monetary, fiscal, trade, income inequality and social justice.  This article is a summary statement of these seven defects.  A more detailed discussion of each of these defects will follow in four seperate articles.

The war on terror was stupidly enacted and is stupidly conducted.…

Dear Friends,

As I write this, I am watching the economic chaos in Greece. I’m sure we’re all sharing the feelings of fear of economic collapse that is rampant among the other European countries – and in fact, around the world.

These events are classic cases of what I detail in my books – “Confesssions of An Economic Hit Man” and “Hoodwinked.”

Greece has been struck by economic hit men. Set to default on its debts, the Athens government is leading the pack…

Since the summer of 2003 I’ve crisscrossed the country speaking at colleges and theaters and bookstores, first with The Weather Underground documentary and, starting in March of this year, with my book Underground:  My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2009).  In discussions with young people, they often tell me, “Nothing anyone does can ever make…

The Trap is a Adam Curtis documentary film originally produced for the BBC in three episodes. It talks about the modern political realities, where the policies came from and the massive failures of those ideals and how they have ended up exactly where they did not want to be.



This episode 1 starts in the Cold War and shows the seeds that were sown to produce the modern political reality. Curtis examines the rise of game theory used during this time, and the way in which its…

This is a great article about the knowledge, skill and experience required to go up against entrenched powerful interests. 

They hang the man and flog the woman,

Who steals the goose from off the common,

Yet let the greater villain loose,

That steals the common from the goose.

  

-- Seventeenth-century English protest rhyme…

I have been thinking a lot about the ineffectiveness of regulatory systems, and the relationship to Ecologist Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons concept for understanding how we come to be at the brink of numerous environmental [and economic] catastrophes. In 2011 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern Mountain Lion extinct, exemplifying a precarious system at best, and showing that impotent laws cannot…

Watching the videos below, and exploring the additional materials and links, is a primer for understanding how seemingly powerless activists organize and affect widespread change.  One caveat is understanding elitism and the irony of democracy;  that changing status quo from one ruling class to another does not necessarily improve all conditions or eliminate oppression and corruption […

Toxic Textiles? Are the sales personnel of Germany's clothing retailers at risk of being poisoned? The textiles they sell are contaminated with highly toxic chemicals. The chemical PCP (Pentachlorophenol), which is prohibited in Germany, is applied to garments to protect them during transport to Europe. Other hazardous pesticides used in the cultivation of cotton in Asia have also been found in textiles. A camera crew picks up the trail in…

Early in 2008, workers at a government-owned textile factory in the Egyptian mill town of El-Mahalla el-Kubra announced that they were going on strike on the first Sunday in April to protest high food prices and low wages. They caught the attention of a group of tech-savvy young people an hour's drive to the south in the capital city of Cairo, who started a Facebook group to…

• The global economy is suffering from a lack of aggregate demand. With insufficient demand, nations compete furiously for their share of the diminishing growth pie.
• In the U.S. and Euroland, many policies only temporarily bolster consumption while failing to address the fundamental problem of developed economies: Job growth is moving…

Eye opening read for all activists ( that requires little commentary) from economist Michael Pettis: