Naked Force used against Democracy in Michigan

Michigan really is an experiment in Fascism. Already, municipal governments are being shut down by state-appointed "emergency management" officials, and towns no longer have control over their own municipal budgets, over their own schools, over anything.



Now, this:

Protesters take the Capitol Building:





Protesters locked out of the capitol building:


Police use pepper spray against protesters:


Michigan Union Member peppersprayed, stepped on by a horse:


via the Michigan ACLU

Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, Lee Camp, and the Transpacific Partnership

SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Could fascism happen here? It did.

The Wave (1981)

Going to High School in Texas, I felt like most kids I went to school with there would have made good Nazis. Unthinking, xenophobic, homophobic, blindly faithful.

Gen. Smedly Butler and "The Business Plot"

The fascist plot to overthrow FDR by american business elite

Globalized Capitalism is Stateless Fascism

Capitalism Isn't Working

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CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING! (or it's working just fine, and this is how it's SUPPOSED to work).

So a couple years ago, about three years ago, I made a video called...
I actually don’t remember what it was called. I’ve deleted it. It was about Capitalism, and how I found the idea that we should be “smashing capitalism” to be infantile. One argument I made was: how would you get avocados for your vegan burrito? What would the incentive be to bringing food from that far away? Would you barter for a hemp necklace?

However, I had made a terrible mistake. Since the word “capitalism” is so propagandized, it’s come to be synonymous with a LOT of things that it has absolutely nothing to do with.

In the video I’m mentioning, I had conflated the term “capitalism” with “markets.”

In reality, capitalism actually has NOTHING TO DO WITH MARKETS. Capitalism simply means that we as a society think that it’s okay for some people who have a lot of money, to buy all the stuff, and then get even more rich simply through the fact that they own all the stuff. Capitalism necessitates abuse of labor. It is in the DNA of capitalism that labor is abused and exploited.

It is under capitalism, that a worker builds a house, and then has to pay the capitalist for the right to live in the house he built with his own hands.

It’s under capitalism that a worker makes hundreds of shoes all day, but is paid so little for his labor by the capitalist who owns the factory, that he cannot, in a day of labor, earn enough to buy a single pair of shoes for himself.

It’s under capitalism that a worker makes enough clothing in a day to clothe a neighborhood block, but is paid so little they would have to save for a month to purchase a single shirt they made through their own labor.

It’s under capitalism, that workers harvest every day from the fields the capitalist owns, enough food to feed a village, but the worker has to pay the capitalist their days wages for the right to eat a single meal’s worth.

You don’t have to think about this very hard to come to understand why so many of our brothers and sisters are homeless, shoeless, naked, and hungry. The game is rigged that way.

These things, the field, the farm, the factory, the financial institution, these are what people are talking about when they say “the means of production.”

What is the value that the capitalist provides in any of these aformentioned situations? The capitalist does no labor, and simply through owning the factory, owning the field, owning the bank, and therefore controlling the money, the capitalist is able to create even more wealth for himself by exploiting the labor of his fellow man.

At what point did we decide that THAT was a good way to organize our society?

Now, it’s often said that capitalism is an economic system. That’s a complete misnomer. Systems have closed loops and sustain themselves. Capitalism is a straight line. What do I mean by that?

Have you ever played the game monopoly? Well, monopoly and capitalism operate under very similar rules. So long as everybody has a fairly equal share of property, and the money keeps getting passed around the board equitably, the game can go on for what seems like forever. But eventually, somebody gets enough of an upper hand that you can see the game is already over. People start losing their homes in order to pay their bills. Sudden expenses come up that you can’t cover, and you start losing the very things that allowed you to participate in the game to begin with. Then slowly and surely, one person ends up owning everything, simply by the virtue of the fact that they own more stuff than anybody else to start with, and then the balance of power tips forever in their favor from that point onwards. And so eventually all the money and all the property ends up in the hands of one person. And that’s how you win Monopoly.

That’s also how you win capitalism. That’s where we’re at right now, on the precipice just before the super-wealthy end up owning every property on the game board, and all the money in the bank, while the rest of us are unable to play the game at all. To the 1%, to the Koch Brothers, I say, congratulations, you win at capitalism. Nobody else has anything. You win.
Another word that people use capitalism as a stand-in for is Democracy. Truly Capitalism and Democracy could not be further from each other in meaning.

Under capitalism, your workplace is organized in a hierarchical structure, in which one person, or a small cabal of people own everything, and reap all the profits from the labor of the workers. The workers have no input in the direction of the business, how it is run, how their fellow workers are treated, etc. If your average workplace were a government, we would readily call it fascism. So let’s call it what it is-- fascism.

Worker-owned autonomous workplaces, however, looks very different from Capitalism. Under worker-owned and operated cooperatives, the workers all share ownership of the means of production. They are all paid equally for their labor, they all share equally in the profits, they all share equally in the losses. Workers come to consensus how to run the business, and how their fellow workers are treated. If this workplace were a government, it would be called a “democracy.” Another word for democracy in the workplace, is “socialism.”

So Socialism and markets are not mutually exclusive. In fact there are many worker-owned cooperatives that you already know about and probably purchase their products regularly, like Land O Lakes butter.

Now, most workplaces are capitalist. Which means that there is little to no democracy in our economic sphere. Which means that a few are enriched through the exploitation of the labor of the many. And in a society where money is legally seen as equivalent to speech, and in practical terms is equivalent to power, it’s quite clear that capitalism CREATES a ruling class, and is the OPPOSITE of democracy.
The lack democracy in our workplaces is the ROOT CAUSE of why there is so little democracy in our governmental systems. For information how to to start your own worker’s cooperative, go to usworker.coop

FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN NDAA!

FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YEAH!

If you don't know why this is awesome, watch this video:



Both Obama and Romney supported the NDAA. Fascist assholes.

Outsourcing? What about INsourcing? aka Prison Labor

"Going to China isn't cheap enough now, so they're sending our jobs to the prison system."

In 2005, 14 million lbs of beef was contaminated with rat feces. A recall was not allowed by the USDA, because it would draw too much attention to prison labor.

So here's the deal: ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a group of corporations that write bills. Then they send them out to corrupt legislators and political leaders around the USA.

One of the things that this group of corporations has been working on is creating a prison labor force.

Some jobs are leaving the country. Others are staying in the country, but being sourced to Prisons. 1 in 100 Americans are in prison right now. We have the highest prison population in the world. Most prisoners are in for nonviolent drug-related offenses.


I'm pretty sure this is the textbook definition of fascism?

Oakland Police start shit again: Firing grenades at a peaceful protest

No Sound

more

Journalists kettled and arrested, via FDL's Kevin Gosztola

Photos of Oakland's Move-In Day via Len Tsou

Paramedics remove a pregnant woman from Occupy Oakland after Police Assault her, jabbing her in the kidney with a baton. via Mercury News

Anonymous issues statement regarding #NDAA and #OpBlackout

TRANSCRIPT
____________

Citizens of the United States,
We are Anonymous.

This message is an urgent warning to the people of the United States. The government has been plotting treason against you.

An addition to the National Defense Authorization Act, Sections 1031 and 1032, will allow the United States government to imprison any person who commits any act they disagree with indefinitly and without trial. Section 1031 reads, "A covered person under this section" includes, "any person who has committed a belligerent act." All persons accused do not get a trial. The Feinstein Amendment, 1031 e, states that, "nothing in this section shall be construed." The Supreme Court are the only ones with the power to construe laws. If this law is passed exactly 24 hours after this video is published, there is no turning back.

They will call us liberals and fanatics. Those are words. Look at the proof. The United States government is decieving you. If you do not wake up now, it will be too late. Your last day of freedom is today. Will you ignore this message and continue your day without another thought? Or will you fight back against this corrupt and vile government? The choice is yours. The latter is best. Petitions will not work this time. Corporates and Billionaires have backed up this law and the government is certain that you will not take action. They are certain that their "bread and circuses" tactic will succeed. Let us prove them wrong.


We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget.
To the United States government, you should've expected us.

Lawrence O'Donnell - Trouble Makers Turn #OccupyWallSt violent

And those troublemakers are the White-Shirt NYPD commanders:

"There is no conceivable justification for [this]." - Lawrence O'Donnell

"There is a Rodney King every day in this country." - Lawrence O'Donnell

Tea Party is a death panel

Wolf Blitzer: "Are you saying society should just let him die?"
Audience: "YEAH!"

These are the same people who cheered at Rick Perry executing 234 people.



Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with these people? What sort of monsters have we become?

I don't say this hyperbolically: this kind of people are the worst people on the face of the planet. They are heartless, psychotic, barbaric, murdering psychopaths.

When Sinclair Lewis said, "Fascism will come to America wrapped in the flag, and carrying a cross" he may not have known it, but he was talking specifically about these people.

---

Alan Grayson was not, in any way, being hyperbolic about the Republican Health Care Plan.

Fascism, Democracy, and the Workplace