Chris Hedges speaks at the People's Recovery Summit organized by Occupy Sandy. The Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew, Brooklyn, NY, February 2, 2013:

The corporate state has made it clear there will be no more Occupy encampments. The corporate state is seeking through the persistent harassment of activists and the passage of draconian laws such as Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act—and we will be in court next Wednesday to fight the Obama administration’s appeal of the Southern District Court of New York’s ruling declaring Section 1021 unconstitutional—to shut down all legitimate dissent. The corporate state is counting, most importantly, on its system of debt peonage to keep citizens—especially the 30 million people who make up the working poor—from joining our revolt.

Workers who are unable to meet their debts, who are victimized by constantly rising interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent on credit cards, are far more likely to remain submissive and compliant. Debt peonage is and always has been a form of political control. Native Americans, forced by the U.S. government onto tribal agencies, were required to buy their goods, usually on credit, at agency stores. Coal miners in southern West Virginia and Kentucky were paid in scrip by the coal companies and kept in perpetual debt servitude by the company store. African-Americans in the cotton fields in the South were forced to borrow during the agricultural season from their white landlords for their seed and farm equipment, creating a life of perpetual debt. It soon becomes impossible to escape the mounting interest rates that necessitate new borrowing.

Debt peonage is a familiar form of political control. And today it is used by banks and corporate financiers to enslave not only individuals but also cities, municipalities, states and the federal government. As the economist Michael Hudson points out, the steady rise in interest rates, coupled with declining public revenues, has become a way to extract the last bits of capital from citizens as well as government. Once individuals, or states or federal agencies, cannot pay their bills—and for many Americans this often means medical bills—assets are sold to corporations or seized. Public land, property and infrastructure, along with pension plans, are privatized. Individuals are pushed out of their homes and into financial and personal distress.

Debt peonage is a fundamental tool for control. This debt peonage must be broken if we are going to build a mass movement to paralyze systems of corporate power. And the most effective weapon we have to liberate ourselves as well as the 30 million Americans who make up the working poor is a sustained movement to raise the minimum wage nationally to at least $11 an hour. Most of these 30 million low-wage workers are women and people of color. They and their families struggle at a subsistence level and play one lender off another to survive. By raising their wages we raise not only the quality of their lives but we increase their capacity for personal and political power. We break one of the most important shackles used by the corporate state to prevent organized resistance.

You can read the rest of Chris Hedges' speech at Truthout.

Via OWS:

Join us and pack the court on February 6 at 10:00 am, 40 Foley Square, Room 1005. This is a critical step in our case, Hedges v. Obama, and the stakes are high. We need your presence in court to show that Americans care about their civil rights.

Join us in solidarity and support of the named plaintiffs Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Brigitta Jónsdóttir, Jennifer “Tangerine” Bolen, Kai Wargalla, and Alexa O’Brien who are challenging the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court is located on 40 Foley Square, NY, NY in room 1505 on the 15th floor. All are welcome.

Visit http://www.stopndaa.org/ for more info and all court filings.

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/123804614457311/

On Monday, December 31st, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported that weapons and high explosive powder were found in the home of a Greenwich Village couple. New York Post reporter Jamie Schram claimed that the accused is an "Occupy Wall Street activist", sans a single source (not even an anonymous one) for the OWS connection.

And so as the OWS PR working group was forced to call the press to account: "We urge members of the media to refrain from spreading rumors and misinformation," emphasizing in the immediate aftermath of the story that "There is nothing… to support a link between OWS and the individual arrested."

Soon after, this was confirmed by the NYPD in the New York Times, which acknowledged there was no evidence the accused was active in any political movements whatsoever. Within another day, Schram himself was forced to write an update which struck any mention of Occupy from the record. The Village Voice documented the lies in New York Post Helps NYPD Slander Occupy Wall Street (Again), followed by FAIR's account of the phony link between Occupy and the arrests, and another Voice headline: More Misresporting on the West Village Explosive Arrests.

This is far from the first time that the Post has distorted the facts of a story in order to associate the movement with violence. As Your Inbox: Occupied, has noted, the results of media misinformation have contributed to "the marginalization of constituencies and views that deserve respectful treatment by reporters, documented police violence, and unconstitutional domestic spying activities."

As Nick Pinto of the Village Voice notes, "a full two days after the Occupy link had already been debunked, CBS This Morning ran a segment doubling down on the false claim," going so far as to bring on Mitchell Silber of K2 Intelligence, a corporate investigation firm. "It's unclear why CBS doesn't bother to identify him as such," writes Pinto, "but well into 2012, Silber was the Director of the Analytic and Cyber Units in the NYPD's controversial Intelligence Division, where he was associated with the division's program of widespread surveillance of Muslim Americans."

Multiple times this year it has become clear that the effort to cast aspersions of criminality over this movement for equity and democracy portends an escalation in repression. When we first called attention to the National Defense Authorization Act, we were seeing frightening signs that violent elements acting outside of Occupy Wall Street and against our principles, will be marshaled to justify a future crackdown heralding from the inner sanctum of the Executive. And the scope of this problem has recently become even more pronounced through disclosures that the "FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America." This pathetic, yet extremely damaging example of collusion between Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street tabloid and elements within the FBI, proves the point.

If you need ideas to start moving from behind your screens and into the streets, we recommend that you start at the nonviolent database of direct action from Swarthmore College.

[Via OccupyWallSt.org, OccupyWallStreet.net]

"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts
not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert
the Constitution."

Abraham Lincoln

Full message from the video:

Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes!

In a stunning move that has civil libertarians stuttering with disbelief, the U.S. Senate has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America.

The National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill, it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to.

Bill Summary & Status, 112th Congress (2011 -- 2012) | S.1867 | Latest Title: National Defense Authorization Act for.

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial

...the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — "U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority."

Continue reading »

Anti-Flag "This Is The New Sound" from the album "The General Strike", out March 20th, 2012 on Sideonedummy Records.

"This Is The New Sound" video was shot at the historic Ohio State Reformatory, the same prison where Shawshank Redemption was filmed.

Amnesty International is teaming with Pittsburgh-based rock band Anti-Flag to speak out against indefinite detention, premiering the group's new music video, "This is the New Sound." Amnesty International and Anti-Flag have worked together on a number of important human rights causes, taking campaigns on tour with the band in the United States and overseas.

You made it to the weekend, TGIF!

Occupy Wall Street protesters rallied in New York City's Grand Central Terminal to call attention to a law signed by President Barack Obama that they say could curb civil liberties.

The protesters gathered in the main concourse of the station Tuesday where they held a noisy rally as hundreds of commuters rushed by.

Twitter reports indicate approximately three arrests related to the Grand Central rally.

Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law on New Year's Eve. Civil rights groups have criticized provisions in the bill that they say seem to grant the military extraordinary powers to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial.

The protesters held a series of actions Tuesday designed to call attention to the law.