occupywallstreet:

Same man? Badge reads Connolly:

If so:

Commanding Officer: Deputy Inspector Thomas J. Connolly
Union Square subway station: 14th Street/Union Square West,
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 253-7511

Has had claim against him of the sexual harassment of Sgt. Nelson…

rideronthedrumbeat:

This is from 2009, but the insider look at Wall Street is invaluable for understanding the protests that are underway in NYPD and the movements that are building across the country in solidarity against corporate greed and corruption.

From The Independent:

Fine wines, lobster lunches and…

THIS ARTICLE.
THIS ARTICLE IS RELEVANT.

The easiest thing was buy into the system, convince ourselves that there was no other way to live. A few semesters worth of economics classes certainly helped; the in-house economics classes taught by the bank helped even more. The financial markets operate on the principle that, at our core, we’re all basically shit: selfish, self-interested creatures. There’s a whole branch of economics devoted to proving that if you help someone, say, run in front of a speeding train to push another person out of the way, you are actually acting out of self-interest, not altruism; that what most of us would consider humankind’s cardinal virtues - love, honor, compassion - do not actually exist.

The idea that we’re nothing more than selfish animals is an attractive philosophy to a person pulling down a few million dollars a year. It is a philosophy that negates guilt. The guilty feeling a normal person gets while visiting a Third World country is the same feeling a senior investment banker gets when they see a working class neighborhood in Birmingham or Philadelphia. When your paycheck could cover the salaries of a few hundred nurses or teachers, you need some explanation for why that’s okay. The only one that really works is that life is a pure meritocracy. That whether rich or poor, we’re all getting what we deserve.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT WHEN I SAY WE HAVE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME. THIS IS THE IDEOLOGY THAT IS RUINING AMERICA, AND WE’LL DO ANYTHING TO DEFEND IT, EVEN IF IT MEANS GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP.

It’s not that people in the City or on Wall Street are necessarily bad people, it’s just that they, like almost anyone, will do anything to keep their million or ten million dollar paycheck. They’ll creatively interpret data, they’ll understate risks, they’ll put the best spin on things. Some will lie, cheat, and steal. But most of them, like most of us, will simply resist looking at the world from any perspective other than their own. And if we are intelligent, we will keep a careful watch on them - both now and into the distant future.

THAT.

MAINTAINING THE IMAGE OF PROSPERITY AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS, DUE TO A BRAINWASHED GROUPTHINK OF SELF-INTEREST OVER THE BELIEF IN ALTRUISM AND SACRIFICE; DUE TO SOME BOORISH ALPHA MALE CONCEPT OF SUPERIORITY THROUGH MONEY.

IT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, IT IS NIHILISTIC AND HEDONISTIC ALL AT ONCE, AND IT PROTECTS ITSELF IN THE SAME WAY YOU AND I PROTECT OURSELVES FROM PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS; FROM PAINFUL FACTS; FROM THE TRUTH.

REPRESSION.

PROJECTION.

DENIAL.

I am SEETHING, and it feels RIGHTEOUS.   

(via thatshephap-deactivated20111116)

cg-nolte:

If only the war on poverty was a real war
then we would actually be putting money into it!

Image © Giles Clarke 2011

shortformblog:

Not very often at all, according to the New York Times. In the weekend’s most unbelievable video, a number of young women were pepper sprayed after reacting towards another man’s arrest, seemingly arbitrarily. “A cop in a white shirt — I think he’s a superior officer — just comes along and…

radioprovo:

9/23/11 – 12:23am

I’m sitting at a table in what used to be Zucotti Park. For the past 6 days, activists of all stripes have staged an occupation of this park, changing its name to Liberty Plaza and declaring it essentially an autonomous zone. The police presence on the perimeter has been…

Are we seeing the final crisis (pdf) of capitalism? What I mean is that Marx envisaged that the end of capitalism would see four features, all of which are in place now.

1. The rate of profit would fall, reducing the motive to invest and producing slower growth and bigger recessions.
Although observed, past profit rates are high, companies’ reluctance to invest and the low valuations on shares suggest that bosses and shareholders anticipate very low future profit rates.
2. Low returns on real assets would lead to speculative bubbles and swindles and hence financial crises. 
To some extent, the banking and euro area debt crises are the results of the dearth of real investment opportunities arising from the fall in (expected) profits. This lack of investment, combined with high Asian savings drove bond yields down. That led to the growth of mortgage securities, as banks tried to synthesize securities to meet demand for them, and encouraged governments to borrow. In this way, the seeds of the financial crises were sown by the fundamental crisis of real profitability.
3. Increased inequality would exacerbate economies’ propensity for crises, by creating a mass of people too poor to buy the goods which capitalism produced. 
This has not quite happened. But, as IMF research has argued, inequalityhas had a very similar destabilizing effect. It led to the build-up of debt which contributed to the banking crisis. 
4. By its end, capitalism would cease to be a means for developing the economy’s productive forces and become instead a barrier to their development. As Marx put it:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production…From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.

nonsensemachine:

#OccupyWallStreet begins

shortformblog:

Because Tumblr user PoetFire asked: Most media outlets are reporting “hundreds” of protesters (or “more than 1,000”) at today’s Occupy Wall Street event. However, a Twitter meme going around today puts that number at closer to 50,000. Above is said tweet, via @AnonOps. Below is a fairly representative crowd shot of the protests, via Twitter user @EgyptEagle, a screenshot from a video of the protests, and (for comparison) an aerial screenshot from a video that showed the crowds at the Tea Party Express protest in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev. The Searchlight protest had a crowd of about 9,000 people. Do you see 50,000 people at today’s protests? We don’t. (BTW: If anyone has an aerial shot of today’s protests, please send it along.)

(via shortformblog)