Image via DARPA website

Now that unmanned surveillance and attack drones hovering over foreign and friendly skies the world over has become almost commonplace, the Pentagon is looking to add another eye in the sky for big brother. The Defense Department’s research arm DARPA, is developing a satellite that would capture real time imagery from space. Project MOIRE (Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation) would fit spy satellites with camera lenses nearly 60 feet wide. DARPA argues that because there aren’t enough drones or other aircraft providing real time imagery and current satellites only take still photos, such a project bridges a national security gap.

According to Universe Today, each MOIRE satellite would cost $500 million and would cover an area of more than 100 km by 100 km. DARPA hopes the device would be able to track a vehicle moving up to 60mph, which would require a resolution so fine it would be able to see objects a mere 10 feet long in a single pixel.

While the satellite is of course, purported to be used to detect missile launchers, one only has to wonder how many organizations like the NSA, CIA, or FBI would love to get their hands on. Given the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the U.S. Government the right to detain American citizens and recently released FBI documents which highlight the agency’s interest in prosecuting animal rights activists as terrorists, we can only wonder how long before MOIRE satellites end up keeping an eye on the average citizen.

Article by Aaron Cynic

                          

Image via The Secularity

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 breezed through Congress and headed to the White House, even though public opposition to parts of the bill, now directed at President Obama in the hope of a hail Mary veto, remains strong. The most troubling aspects of the bill violate fundamental rights provided in the U.S. Constitution to American citizens by giving the government sweeping power to indefinitely detain citizens without trial. Like many other pieces of legislation, this year’s NDAA is another push in a long series of movements marching the U.S. Towards a hard right, nearly fascist state.

In addition to this, the NDAA also contains troubling language regarding Department of Defense interests in Iran, China, Wikileaks, defense contractors and more. A report from a conference on the NDAA contains tough talk in respect to both China and Iran. Considering the amount of saber rattling many warhawks have already engaged in, one has to wonder seriously whether the U.S. Could further engage in military actions towards Iran and what exactly, the DOD believes our attitude towards the Chinese will be in the coming year. The bill contains an amendment which requires economic sanctions towards entities in Iran as well as a provision for “an independent review of current U.S. Capability gaps to counter Iran and China” (emphasis mine). The conference report also says it “takes steps to ensure that the United States is fully prepared to defend our vital interests against an emerging competitor” in regards to China.

Given the information dumps from Wikileaks over past two years, as well as the horrid treatment of Private Bradley Manning, on trial for providing information to Wikileaks, the Pentagon is very interested in keeping other potential whistleblowers at bay. The Defense Department’s research arm already expressed interest this year in employing a disinformation campaign against would be Wikileakers. The NDAA conference report codifies that interest, saying it:

Requires the Secretary of Defense to establish a comprehensive program to detect unauthorized uses of classified information. Requires technological solutions, updated policies and procedures, and enforcement measures to assist with detection of such unauthorized activities.

The NDAA would also eliminate oversight regarding ties politicians have to defense contractors. In the name of keeping “the acquisition process free from political influence,” the act no longer requires contractors to declare their political contributions before applying for defense contracts. In other words, Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumann needn’t disclose campaign donations if they wish to produce another budgetary sinkhole like the F-35, for which the NDAA provides another $8.5 billion.

Not only does this year’s NDAA push America closer to the brink of a police state and moves us inches closer to new wars, it highlights the machinations of a broken political system. National security experts don’t want it, military leaders don’t want it, the director of the FBI doesn’t want it, Civil Liberties experts don’t want it, the people don’t want it and yet, it passed both legislative bodies and awaits the President’s signature. The majority of legislators show little concern for the will of the people they supposedly serve. Should President Obama decide to sign the bill, it will show the executive branch is no more interested in preserving the will of the people and the core of our democracy than the legislators who ignored overwhelming opposition to this piece of legislation.

If there’s any wonder why so many citizens devote their time to protest, why nearly half of the American people believe this is the “worst Congress ever” and another third call it “below average,” it is because politicians now brazenly defy the will of their constituents. If our democracy is to survive, politicians must become public servants, rather than oligarchs only interested in maintaining their power.

Article by Aaron Cynic

                          

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week in the Tribune, Dennis Byrne made an attempt to dismiss poverty in America and criticize the Occupy movement by calling poverty an “overstated” problem. Using the typical conservative demon of welfare and government subsidies via research from the right wing Heritage Foundation, Byrne argues that the 46.2 million Americans the government defines as impoverished don’t have it rough enough, thanks to government aid. He asks “Do the numbers accurately reflect the perception most Americans have of an impoverished family living, if not on the streets, like starving squatters in rat-infested hovels?”

Well Dennis, sorry to burst your bubble, but poverty isn’t always rat infested hovels or bloated bellies that appear in commercials in late night television. Is that what the “great society” should truly use to measure how it cares for its vulnerable citizens? If two people in a household of four lose their jobs, go underwater on their mortgage after spending more than a year or two desperately trying to find a job that pays enough to keep their home and put food on the table, does that not count as poor? If a single mother with two children working two minimum wage jobs just to pay rent gets her power shut off because of constant cost increases, but no wage increase, is she just not poor enough? If an elderly man living in subsidized housing is spending the bulk of his income – even with medicaid – on prescription drugs to keep healthy, is his situation “overstated?”

Byrne gives credit that at least 4 percent of Americans that are from homeless or hungry households, saying “to them, destitution is real, not a statistic to be batted around or used for political purposes.” Unfortunately for the rest of struggling Americans, their situation just doesn’t measure up to what appears to be a longing for a new network of Hoovervilles. The idea that the majority of Americans classified as poor aren’t because they receive a form of government aid is one of the most overused conservative talking points during election season. The irony of Byrne’s statement seems to be lost on him.

Most interestingly, Byrne closes his piece by saying “let’s better empathize with the poor and better understand poverty. Give the occupiers credit for that much. But ill-informed rhetoric and unbridled finger-pointing won’t get us there.” To suggest that the majority of poor Americans aren’t actually poor because they might have a roof over their head or aren’t starving on a day to day basis is the furthest thing from empathy and a completely ill-informed view of the realities the American impoverished face.

The core of this argument has been made countless times before. We live in the most luxurious, safe and industrialized country and therefore, shouldn’t complain too hard because “things could be worse.” We haven’t seen bread lines yet or a total economic collapse yet. We shouldn’t have to. What Occupy movements all over the world fight for each day is a way to prevent economic disparity from increasing, to prevent total economic collapse. The people in front of the Federal Reserve each day aren’t simply spouting rhetoric or pointing fingers, they’re actively attempting to address problems that exist at the core of how our society currently operates. They’ve realized business as usual politics and economics cannot be sustained forever. We need new ideas. We cannot rely on our political system, which is so entrenched in maintaining the status quo, to do that. The sooner conservative mouthpieces realize that, the sooner we can move forward to creating a greater society.

                          

Image via Wikimedia Commons

That same ol’ catchphrase is still ringing in the ears of Americans everywhere: that of the “job creators.” In these hard times of high unemployment, it’s all about these mysterious job creators, whom we’re
desperately awaiting to save us all.

From my understanding, these supposed job creators are corporations owning a certain level of wealth.  Yet, how is it that they still retain this moniker when they are not creating any jobs?  (Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time to look for a new messiah to save us from the crisis. As Einstein said, we can’t solve our problems employing the same ideas -in this case, entities- we used to create them. )

So the conservative narrative surrounding job creators and tax cuts declares that if we tax them one single cent more than we already are, then they will not create any more jobs. (Which they have not been creating anyways.)

Here’s the real question I’m getting at, and its quite simple: President Bush’s tax cuts on these “job creators” lowered their taxes to unprecedented levels. Yet it was also under these same tax cuts, that the entire financial crisis began.

Under the system of changes to the tax code that Bush instated (known as the EGTRRA of 2001, and the JGTRRA of 2003) the “job creators” began slashing jobs at an alarming rate.

So how can it be, as the Republicans argue, that tax cuts inspire “job creators” to create jobs?  When in fact, history proves the opposite: that the tax cuts did NOT spur growth. It is a stretch to say for certain that the tax cuts actually destroyed jobs, but they certainly did not create them.  What these supposedly miraculous tax cuts DID do is severely increase the budget deficit and contribute to an enormous and growing income inequality in the US.

It’s time for the discourse to discard this fallacy and move forward. President Obama extended these same tax cuts I speak of for two years until 2012. Let’s make sure they stop there.

Maggi Fermier is a political scientist who spent the last four years studying politics scientifically in Paris, Budapest and Southeastern Africa. With a lust for social movements, she is excited about the recent movement out of apathy in the US, and enjoys contributing to independent media. She spends her time reading blogs, writing blogs, and taking thousands of photos…to post on her blog.

                          

A Capitalist Against Corporate Greed:

I own an Apple iPhone.

I have a MacBook that I take everywhere with me.

I drink Starbucks when my body needs a caffeine fix.

I eat McDonalds but prefer Corner Bakery when I’m hungry and away from home.

I smoke Camel cigarettes.

I am a proud member of Occupy Chicago. I am protesting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the 1000-plus occupied cities in the US for economic equality for all people, for an elimination of corporate influence over government regulation, and against corporate greed.

The goods and services I use to facilitate my lifestyle are not mutually exclusive to my social activism. In fact, the situation is quite opposite.

I require nicotine, caffeine and food to fuel this body to take the streets chanting with my brothers and sisters in action. Step by step, mile by magnificent mile until our throats are scratched, our voices cracking from calling to passersby, the buildings, the very fabric of society.

“People over profits! Occupy Chicago!”

and

“Show me what democracy looks like!” “THIS is what democracy looks like!”

I would feed this machine with locally grown, organic, fair trade sustenance but there are no farmer’s markets on the corner of LaSalle and Jackson. However, I gratefully fill my body with others’ kindness: gifts of donuts, bagels, crackers, pizza, and boxes of coffee, gulped down quickly in between breaths of conversation with fellow Occupiers on how to improve our world.

I purchase a $1.89 cheeseburger at McDonald’s when I need to charge my phone, make a quick zine, send emails to fellow occupiers, or take notes on my Occupy Chi experiences.

I use my iPhone to snap pictures of my fellow occupiers. I upload them to Facebook, to my tumblr, to my website, and tweet them out. When I’m taking the El back to my car, I watch the Occupy Chicago livestream.

Certainly, there is a glaring inconsistency of using corporate products like my iPhone, fast food and coffee, and Big Tobacco cigarettes to fight the corporate influence and greed. However, contradiction or no, I will fight with every tool at my disposal to improve this system. If that means implementing the ones of my enemy, then so be it. I’ll eagerly use their products to dismantle their system.

I will use their hegemony to recreate it into ours.

Article by Natalie W

                          

It’s beautiful.

It’s also one of the most difficult endeavors you’ll face in your entire life.

None of this will come easy.

We’ve already seen how police and other authorities have reacted to your kindred spirits in New York, Boston, LA, Seattle, and dozens of other cities. We’ve seen thousands of people arrested, beaten, gassed, and assaulted in the streets. We’ve seen shouting matches between police and protesters, between passersby and protestors and between occupiers themselves. It is anger, frustration and fear that fuels these confrontations, that causes humans to act so violently towards each other and has set our species into a downward spiral where we all suffer. None of this needs to happen. You have shown this. You continue to show this each day you adapt to new situations. Each time a confrontation is avoided, each time someone decides to use words instead of weapons, each time someone decides a conversation is better than an altercation.

While it feels good to act out in anger, to use that bottled up emotion to transform a symbol of corporate personhood into rubble, to resist becoming a captive of the police state, to tear every single cell that makes up this thing we call “the system” to shreds – you must not act out of anger. You must act instead, out of love. The system, the capitalist hegemony, the patriarchal structure, the empires that once were and are now, built themselves on the same emotions – anger, fear and frustration. Even the most democratic revolutions have seen the faces of the oppressed transform into the faces of oppressors. You do not have to let that happen. You must not let that happen.

Change is a constant in the universe. Change is what’s happening in every occupied city. Change is what’s happening right now to each one of you. Change is what’s happening to society as a whole. You are agents of that change, as are your friends and foes. No empire lasts forever. No nation lasts forever. No movement lasts forever. In the eyes of time even the largest empire is smaller than a grain of sand. You must remember this. Even if tomorrow, every occupied city clears out demonstrators and arrests and jails them, you will still go on, possibly together with friends and comrades in arms, possibly alone. But what you have done in the past three weeks, what you may do in the coming weeks, what you have learned and experienced, what you have seen – those things will carry on with you for the rest of your life.

Even if tomorrow all of your demands are met, you must not let it end there.

You must take the lessons you’ve learned and apply them to new experiences. What you do in the streets is important to make a change – and a positive one. But you must take that with you wherever you go, whatever you do. That is what is key, what is most important in the Occupy Movement. Occupy not only the streets and parks of a city, but the hearts and minds of others. Occupy your own heart, your own mind, your own spirit. Be not just an agent of change and a force for good for today, but one for the rest of time.

So if you want to smash the state, simply remember – don’t let it drive you. The old mechanisms of the world are already cracked, crumbling and turning to sand. They’re rotten, hollowed out and old. Those who prop them up would have you believe the sun never sets on the seats of power. But, the sun has already gone down. They may have tried to bury hope, but hope is rising again with the new sun. As it does, we can build something better and brighter with the dust beneath our feet.

                          

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Kevin Drum in Mother Jones today disagreed with Greg Sargent of the Washington Post when Sargent said “The attention to Occupy Wall Street notwithstanding, news orgs tend to find right wing demonstrations of popular unrest inherently more newsworthy and deserving of sustained coverage than left wing ones.” Drum points to the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980’s, the anti corporate globalization protests of the 90’s and the demonstrations against the war in Iraq as examples of coverage. He says “The problem, I suspect, isn’t that popular movements of the left get ignored, but that the left hasn’t been mounting any popular movements lately.”

I would say that populist progressive movements do get coverage, but the details of how that coverage plays out is more important. First, both the anti corporate globalization movement and the anti-war movement got more negative coverage from mainstream news sources than movements like the Tea Party have. In addition, the Tea Party has its own completely sympathetic conglomerate (Newscorp), which has much more reach than an organization like Media Matters or websites like Mother Jones. The conservative right has also pretty much owned talk radio exclusively since the 90’s, and well funded organizations like Freedom Works have been on the streets since the early 2000’s.

One of the biggest issues is that rank and file Democrats and the Obama campaign are seen in the same light by the right and much of the mainstream press as representatives of the “left,” which they are clearly not. But since conservatives have done an incredible job not only convincing a huge swath of Americans that the President is a “socialist,” but completely changing what that term actually means (socialism and communism are the same thing, both are the same thing as fascism and therefore, anyone to the left of Reagan may as well be a terrorist), mainstream coverage of progressive movements is at first, smaller and second, nearly always negative.

One only needs to look at this article from Smart Money about how the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t only a group of shiftless, jobless hippie layabouts – but also a violent and scary group of potential terrorists. Publications like Smart Money, or Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, as well as many other media conglomerates like the Tribune Company, have a vested interested in vehemently opposing a movement like Occupy Wall Street. After all, their investments depend on keeping things status quo.

Fact is, true progressive movements have a harder time gaining steam, because they’re not only facing opposition from the right, they face opposition from the center as well. Plenty of Democratic politicians have the same ties to big business that Republicans and other right wing organizations do. Groups like the Tea Party were instantly latched onto by well funded conservatives. Movements like Occupy Wall Street have had to start completely from scratch.

                          

A march happens each day, this one in particular shortly after word came through that hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York were corralled onto the Brooklyn Bridge and mass arrested. After an hour long general assembly meeting, demonstrators headed through the financial district, Millennium Park, the Magnificent Mile and back to base camp to once more spread messages of solidarity, positivity and persistence in the face of a political system that’s left 99% of Americans without a real voice in governance. We passed tourists and travelers, wedding parties and street performers and the usual easy bustle of an autumn Saturday in Chicago. Even though a mere half city block away, many people went about their business without a passing glance to the boisterous dance of the dispossessed, I found those who locked eyes with demonstrators carried on conversations about the ideas of those occupying.

While it may be young and still trying to get organized, the movement to Occupy America is growing and cohering. And though many went home after Saturday’s march, more than a hundred stayed to continue organizing and evangelizing, with no plans to leave until they feel their job is done.

IMG00588-20111001-1647 IMG00574-20111001-1544 IMG00627-20111001-1743 IMG00574-20111001-1544 IMG00575-20111001-1544 IMG00578-20111001-1617 IMG00579-20111001-1631 IMG00588-20111001-1647 IMG00591-20111001-1656 IMG00599-20111001-1702 IMG00618-20111001-1719 IMG00627-20111001-1743 IMG00638-20111001-1803 IMG00637-20111001-1802

                          

Image Via Flickr User mrbuckwheattree

I dropped in on the Occupy Chicago demonstrators on Tuesday to check on their morale after spending mostof my Saturday with them last weekend. As the occupation of Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park begins to enter its third week, the small but spirited occupation of the corner of Jackson and LaSalle, mere feet in front of the doors to the federal reserve, enters its second. Most of the people I found in front of the Fed were new, showing up in solidarity after hearing about the movement on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook or what little major media coverage has trickled out. The newer occupiers blended perfectly well with the ones who had been taking part since Friday morning, providing a much needed energy boost to a rain soaked and weary core in need of a good night’s sleep and a fully charged cell phone.

Despite five days of rain from Chicago’s skies, a few slightly tense situations with police on Monday, and a tepid, if not scolding, response from most media – the general spirits of those participating here in the occupy movement remain high.

One of the main criticisms of the occupy movement is that their list of demands is too nebulous, that the reason why autumn in America won’t gain momentum like the Arab spring is that, as Lauren Ellis of Mother Jones put it, “There’s something there for everyone, but no one clear message that can carry a movement forward.” But the demands of demonstrators everywhere – from New York to Chicago, Boston to San Fransisco carry a core commonality – American politics as usual are so entrenched with big business, the needs of its people have fallen by the wayside and merely stepping into a ballot box once every few years hasn’t affected much change. As the New York Times put it, the consensus that we’re living at the end of history, that “liberal economics combined with democratic institutions represented the only path forward…has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises.”

The occupy movement is giving people something more to believe in than traditional politics or even traditional methods of social change. It’s giving people a belief in themselves. What I’ve seen on the streets of Chicago is a group of smart if frustrated, but definitely dedicated individuals yearning to find better solutions to an interconnected patchwork of problems so large they seem insurmountable. Simply signing petitions or getting out the vote is no longer enough, because those votes go to career politicians many of whom sit deep in the back pockets of corporate conglomerates that are literally drafting legislation. As Glenn Greenwald from Salon pointed out, “Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power — in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions — is destroying financial security for everyone else?”

Someone very close to me pointed out in a conversation yesterday that the nature of every campaign – marketing, presidential, protest – is fluidity. That fluidity doesn’t undercut the message because sharpening and adjusting are what make healthy beings function. The occupy movement is still cutting its teeth, staying fluid and trying to remain inclusive to new ideas in a nation whose circular political process has lead it to the kind of apathy where citizens feel more engaged by voting for the next celebrity musician than they do the next person making the very laws that govern them.

While other criticisms center around the usual police brutality shows we see during demonstrations of this nature (curiously absent from the conservative Tea Party protests not too long ago) or that the only people showing up are “the usual suspects,” they’re not exactly relative to the movement itself. It may have started with dreamers, but some of those dreamers are middle class Americans trying to make ends meet, unemployed or underemployed Americans wishing for work in a crumbling economy, and more. All of them – and most of us can recognize the tyranny that everyone knows:

When someone else fights your wars, scrubs your toilets, drives your trucks, stocks your shelves, keeps you safe at night and pours your coffee in the morning, you can’t expect them to simply sit down and shut up when you show more concern for your pocketbook than people. When your sense community is encased by walls and gates and your idea of family ends with the handful of humans who share similar strands of dna, you not only lose the right to make decisions for the people, you never had it in the first place. That’s the first, but not last lesson of Occupy Wall Street, and one that every American should learn.