On April 27, 2013, Horace Campbell presented a workshop titled "Ending the Fabrication of the War on Terror: Lessons from Africa" at the Resisting

Drones, Global War and Empire convergence in Syracuse, NY.

Part 1 is Horace's opening remarks.

Watch Now!

On April 19^th, 2013, I interviewed Kathy Kelly—a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, which is a campaign to end United States military and economic warfare. The website is VCNC dot org. Kathy has lived in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and one of the roles she will play at the convergence is to relay those experiences and give a human voice to the lived reality of people over seas who deal with drone surveillance and are murdered by drone attacks on a daily basis. Kathy, and many others, will be attending “Resisting Drones, Global War and Empire" convergence, April 26 - 28 in Syracuse, NY. (See the FaceBook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/540569232649914/?ref=22.)

Gar Alperovitz, a leading scholar and activist in the building of a new economy, speaks on “Democratizing the Emerging Economy.” Cooperatives, social enterprises, public banks and other new structures provide a new vision for the next economy. Alperovitz, the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, will explain how this work, especially the various forms of cooperative ownership, is helping to lay the groundwork for important new directions in the coming era that will see major political and economic changes. Alperovitz’s latest book is America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy, which diagnoses the long-term structural crisis of the US economic and political system and offers detailed, practical answers to the problems. He is also the author of Unjust Deserts: Wealth and Equality in the Knowledge Economy (with Lew Daly), Making a Place For Community (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio), Rebuilding America (with Jeff Faux), Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Alperovitz is a founding principal of the University of Maryland-based Democracy Collaborative, a research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth. Alperovitz’s talk was sponsored by Cooperation Texas, an Austin-based non-profit committed to the creation of sustainable jobs through the development, support and promotion of worker-owned cooperatives. Video produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix/Austin Indymedia production. http://zgraphix.org

Monday, February 25, 2013

original article can be found at: http://jalilmuntaqim-behindthewalls.blogspot.com/2013/02/blog-19-targeted-killing.html

Direct Action, Occupy and the Power of Social Movements: An Interview With Noam Chomsky

Submitted by Shane Burley of Rochester Red and Black on Thu, 2013-04-18 19:37

Shane Burley of Rochester Red and Black interviewed Noam Chomsky for his upcoming housing documentary "Expect Resistance."
Original article can be found here:

Corporate-Approved State Bills Kick Low-Wage Workers While They’re Down

WS – You didn’t really think Obama would raise the minimum wage without  giving Big Businesses a few loopholes and more profits off the low wage workers sweat. Get ready for the big spin folks. 

President Obama called for a modest raise in the federal minimum wage to $9 in his State of the Union Address, and several Democratic legislators have upped his bid with a proposed increase to $10.10.

But an insidious effort to lower the wage floor is already underway much closer to the ground—in the state legislatures where right-wing lobbyists have been greasing the skids for years for an onslaught of anti-worker policies.

An extensive analysis recently published by labor advocacy organization the National Employment Law Project tracks more than 100 bills introduced in 31 states since January 2011 that “aim to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the state or local level.” Each bears the fingerprint of notorious super-lobbying organization the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which acts as a forum for “private sector leaders” to advise public officials. Most of the anti-worker bills were proposed by lawmakers directly linked to ALEC and include language that echoes that of “model legislation” developed by ALEC. Among the proposals are measures to undercut minimum wages for teenage workers, restrict overtime pay and repeal or ban local laws to improve working conditions.

This afternoon, a sales clerk at the Ghirardelli shop at the San Francisco Centre, apparently chased after and tackled a man who appeared to be homeless and had allegedly stolen a stack of candy bars.

20-30 people did a mic check in a downtown Pittsburgh Mcdonald's earlier today demanding fair wages and fair labor practices.
This action brought on by 3 Mcdonald's employees who arein this country on a work visa.
The visiting Mcdonald's employees were accompanied by local union members of Fight Back Pittsburgh, The United Steel Workers and SEIU 32BJ, and One Pittsburgh.
Today's mic check spilled into the sidewalk outside of the Smithfield street restaurant, brining the Pittsburgh Police and Allegheny County Sherrifs to the first organized protest requiring police attention for 6 months 

Allegheny County Council approves fracking at the Pittsburgh International Airport in a move that will bring in $500 million dollars to the county.

"We're sitting on the Saudi Arabia of America!" one councilman exclaimed during his speech on why he's voting yes. 

The Real Video is BELOW the Text

Panel Presentation from the
North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference

• Beck, Eric. “Beyond Coops and Currency Alternatives: Towards a Critical Anarchist Political Economy”
• Guldi, Jo. “Global Finance and the Rise of an International Squatter Culture, 1946-2012″
• Hayes, Ryan. “‘Nothing to show for it’: on archiving & amplifying social movement culture”
• Moderator: Len Krimerman

Panel Presentation from the North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference

Sethness-Castro, Javier. “For an Ecological Anarcho-Communism” (via SKYPE)

Due to Technical Difficulties the End of Javier's and the beginning of Gabriel's presentation were lost to fluctuating bandwidth from the livestream. 
Below, in text, is the missing part of Gabriel's presentation.  
Below that is the remainder of the panel.

Piser, Gabriel. “Frack and Friction: The Contested Futures of Development in Appalachia”
Engel-Di Mauro, Salvatore. “Anarchism and Environmental Degradation” 
Moderator: John Clark

Weaving Together Ungovernable Flesh: The Activist Threat of State Legibility

In the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy I watched along with countless others as the Media frenzied Halloween coinciding "Frankenstorm" Sandy appeared to make a beeline for New York and New Jersey. Sandy brought with it an ecological wake up, with a swirling natural example of a Fibonacci sequence contained in an immense storm and delivered to the doorstep of Wall Street in New York. Sandy had more “wake-up” painted on it than the equally sad storm of Honey Boo Boo foisted on the American public during prime time people programing hours. Sandy headed quite literally for ground zero of the Wall Street/Governmental poster child for disparity replete throughout our present system and the heart of Americas Occupy movement. The sweeping northern arm of the storm was in a placement for optimal damage around New York and New Jersey. The BBC had aired the scenario in a 2009 Episode of Hot Planet and it had painted this exact scenario as a probability of Global Warming due to slight temperature rises in the Atlantic. Hot Planet could not have been more uncanny in its prediction or theory. Add to this, the screaming silence of omission in the presidential debates about the environment and global warming. Now a "monster storm" was headed dead on and like it or not debate stopped upon the fact that this was to be massive! Indeed it was massive. Its' wake is equally so on many levels. The storm hit, emergency services scrambled, store shelves vacated, generators flew from the Home Depots stores in my area as if beamed up by Scotty on the Starship Enterprise prior to an ion storm that would deplete the dilithium crystals and render warp drive inoperable. The cacophony of preparation soon met the cacophony of real-time emergency action. It stretched many services to the breaking point as well as many lives. The onslaught of the activity is almost impossible to outline in coherent form, but chaos is a word now familiar to those who bore the brunt of it. The after effects equally so in scale and ramification. In its wake Sandy left emergency response further politicized by Mayor Bloomberg's reluctance to cancel the mass of supplies headed to 40,000 marathon runners while another 40,000 were literally and figuratively left in the dark. Bloomberg is reported to have finally conceded to pleas and threats from senior staff and even the New York Marathon organizers themselves. Mayor Bloombergs marathon priority in the face of so many suffering was demonstrative Hail Mary bonehead play if there ever was one. Clearly it showed the disconnect that exists in the disparity of real lives and the uppity out of touch privileged rich and galactically misinformed and/or uncaring. After affects met with slow or no response by FEMA bureaucracy, along with other large Aid agencies, some neighborhoods completely leveled by fire, a total disaster for great swaths and a near miss for others around New York. Yes, disaster all around was an understatement. continued below---

Occupy Sandy Relief - My House is Your House is Our House

http://occupyoakland.org/2012/11/occupy-oakland-fdg-is-trying-to-save-jodies-home-and-we-need-your-support/