“I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.” – Hunter S Thomposon, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist
Bat Country Word Video Stream
The Word has eyes on the ground covering the protests NATO summit in Chicago. Look here for posted updates and links throughout the weekend.
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Hello Bat Country and welcome to the show. Today we have some ass-sore news for you so break out the inflatable donuts and prepare to be pissed.
Congress has passed resolutions to double the interest rates of college loans. Not only does that fucking blow worse than a New Jersey drag-queen off I-95 turnpike, but college loans are the largest debt for all Americans. These loans are topping out at over a Trillion dollars. That’s right, a Trillion dollars!
But it doesn’t stop there folks. Beginning July 1st of 2012, there will be no longer be subsidized loans for graduate students.
The most maddening part of this debacle is it is the same old tactic being used by politicians. Nutjobs like Virginia Foxx make students out to be free loaders.
She states, ” I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. ” No reason? How about college tuition has increased by 700 percent since 1978! That is ten years after this fossil graduated college. But it’s understandable how she could be so confused. From the Huffington Post, “According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1968, the average yearly cost for tuition, room, and board for a public university was $1,245. ”
Maybe you are thinking to yourself, “Well Bat Country, I don’t want my tax dollars paying for someone else’s college.” Well Einstein, who is actually paying more when you keep the poor people from going to grad school? You are! “Why?” you ask? Because, people who go to grad school will graduate with their masters, Ph.D or M.D. degrees. That means, they have higher paying jobs. That means, they will be the middle to upper middle class that will pay more taxes. If you eliminate the ability for people to gain higher paying jobs, there will be less of a tax base and thus, more money from us in increased taxes. There will also be more cuts to your grandmother’s medicaid for her psychiatric drugs and Social Security. That’s right champ, your elderly mother will have to move back in with you. That’ll sure set the mood the next time you want to have your wife suspended from the ceiling in bondage.
Unless you like your mothball smelling grandparents and parents all up in your shit, you need to start voicing your opinions in defense of student loans. It’s time that we cut off the welfare gravy train for the wealthiest people in our country and start taxing them before morons like Virginia Foxx FUBAR our country.
Possibly the worst outcome of forced austerity measures has come about in the political landscape of Greece: a popular neo-Nazi party. The party, called Golden Dawn, rose to power on the ideas of anti-immigration and now receive notoriety for opposing the recent German-forced austerity measures. The party has been around for about 20 years, but only recently gained enough momentum to hold any office; in 2010 they gained one seat in the Athens city council and in the May 6th, 2012 elections the party won 21 seats in Greek Parliament.
Golden Dawn’s official positions seem to be equivocation and evasion when it comes to their Nazi affiliation. The group states that they are not neo-Nazis or fascists, but they are strong nationalists and authoritarians. Their flag features a traditional Greek “meander” border that they say explicitly is not a swastika. They are very anti-immigrant and want a “clean Greece,” but they couch their racist ideals in nationalism and economic rhetoric. Golden Dawn members use a “Roman salute,” the salute of former Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas, and they declare it is definitely not a Nazi salute. (As you can see below.)
Outside of the Greek body politic, the group acts as a lynch gang against journalists, leftists such as Anarchists and Communists, as well as immigrants. They’ve also been tied to the police. Recent polling data suggests that in voting precincts around police stations the popularity of Golden Dawn soars; one such estimation by a newspaper calculated that half of the police force in and around Athens voted Golden Dawn. In the video below, Golden Dawn members, side-by-side with police, attack immigrant street vendors and the Anarchists who rose up to defend them.
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In an incredibly not-shocking announcement today, George W. Bush gave his fleeing and tepid endorsement to Mittens Q. Romneyfeld III. (A move sure to inspire those Americans who long for the glory days of a W. administration. You know, torture, war crimes, the Veep blowing somebody’s face off with a shotgun, religion in the classrooms and science in the back alley: “the LULZ,” as the kids say these days.)
“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
Now just hold on a fucking second here. Let me break that into digestible chunks because there’s a lot of “WTF” in that one sentence.
1. “’I’m for Mitt Romney,’ Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him…” What the fuck is that? Did he disappear in a puff of smoke? Is he a ninja? No followup to that? I guess that’s all it takes for an endorsement these days. Print the shirts! W for Romney! You heard it. Always a man of few words and fewer thoughts.
2. “[A]fter he gave a speech on human rights …” Whoa, there. What in the actual fuck!? Human rights and Bush? Those things go together about as well as a huge bowl of scrambled eggs and big chunks of dogshit. But no, here it is right from his own website:
On Tuesday, May 15, the George W. Bush Presidential Center will hold a special event to celebrate the brave efforts of dissidents and activists around the world in their fight to be free.
I bombed you into Freedom! Arab Spring, you’re welcome.
Play us out Shep…
Finally, someone’s getting it right about anarchy. The majority of anarchist action revolves around fitting libertarian-socialism, communalism, or mutualism arrangements into the capitalist society at large. When people think of anarchy they think of riots, smashed windows, chaos, and little cartoonish round black bombs with long fuses. What they should be envisioning is a living room of used furniture filled with people in black t-shirts drinking tea and discussing Bookchin’s contribution or Chomsky’s early works.
Brendan Kiley, of Seattle’s The Stranger, finally gives Anarchy the plain brown wrapper it deserves. From the article “Anarchy is Boring”:
Figuring out how to run a sustainable anarchist household (that values time spent washing the dishes and time spent making money as a computer programmer equally) isn’t as headline-grabbing as a downtown smashup. But Seattle has dozens of functional anarchist organizations—or anarchish organizations. Some of them operate in an anarchist way (consensus decision making, a focus on mutual aid instead of competition) but don’t call themselves anarchistic. And even the ones that do are constantly debating how to strive for anarchist ideals within the current economic and political system. (Give me two anarchists, and I will give you a debate on what “real” anarchism means.)
He adds:
Anarchy, [David Graeber] writes, is about gradually figuring out new ways of organizing everyday life “which will, eventually, make currently existing forms of power seem stupid and beside the point… there are endless examples of viable anarchism: pretty much any form of organization would count as one, so long as it was not imposed by some higher authority, from a klezmer band to the international postal service.”
Small examples of functional anarchy are everywhere—it’s just a matter of learning how to see them and, if you are so moved, lend them a hand.
Read it all at The Stranger.
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(Photo: Paul Weiskel)
First your article is titled “Black Blockers Vow to Continue Attacking” when I don’t think that’s accurate. A more accurate title might be “Black Blockers Vow to Continue Self-Defense.” In the Anarchist News article you quoted it states:
Upwards of 300 people showed up and immediately took the streets after a violent confrontation with the hundreds of police intent on stopping us.
And:
no small accomplishment given the heavy-handed police presence brought about by the widely-circulated NYPD SHIELD Counter-Terrorism memo that detailed the importance of stopping the Wildcat March from happening.
As well as:
Most telling, however, was the fact that photographers in the midst of the bloc explicitly stated their intent to de-mask participants.
And:
One photographer, who has yet to be identified, was confronted by a masked young woman. She told him to “get his fucking camera out of [her] face”. After repeating this several times, she pushed his camera away, and he promptly sucker punched her in the face.
In short, a tense group of people started a march that was attacked by police. The violent state-funded oppressors, of course, were arresting these protesters in order to deter them from marching, as their own literature discussed. Meanwhile, cameramen were infiltrating the group and unmasking them. Unmasking someone involves putting your hands on them and removing an article of their clothing. And you’re shocked that that sort of assault would meet with resistance? I call stopping someone from putting their hands on your face self-defense –especially in a straining confrontation with a corrupt and violent police force.
Also, your article states “Six Black Bloc members were arrested in New York City during the May Day protests,” but it does not state what these people were arrested for. As many Occupiers can tell you, and as you yourself know well, police arrests don’t necessarily equate with something moral or ethical. And yet, you’re all too happy to provide their mugshots on your website. Which is the Anarchist’s criticism of the photographers in the first place: you’re helping the corrupt police force, you’re helping society shame these people –even on sketchy details or no details at all—just because of an amorphous idea that anyone in Black Bloc must automatically be bad.
Ignoring, of course, the LA Activist story that recently lauded Black Blockers for placing themselves in front of police to attract police attention, and to keep the May Day marches moving. Or the Oakland Black Blockers who shielded protesters from a violent corrupt police force intent on harming them and other demonstrators.
You finish your article with this smirking admonition:
I imagine they will be attending the Republican National Convention protests in Tampa this August, so I hope they are aware that we have this controversial “Stand Your Ground” law that allows gun owners to kill anybody that is a perceived threat to them.
Are you suggesting RNC convention-goers would be justified and state-authorized to shoot anyone in Black Bloc? (And yet, Anarchists are the ones who are portrayed as violent.) Haven’t recent events in Florida swayed us from perpetrating violence upon each other and couching it in the protections of this law?
This is where we must depart in our debate. I cannot excuse the state-justified killing of anyone, not Black Bloc, not journalists, not anyone. The state murders enough people without my help.
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Q: What’s the difference between Mitt Romney and a Dalek?
A: Mitt Romney is more handsome.
In this video below, R-money Mitt-bot 2012 fries his logic board. “THE ECONOMY, THE ECONOMY, THE ECONOMY!” “Aren’t there issues of significance you’d like to talk about?”
You know he was thinking, “Marriage, Healthcare, those are issues that concern hu-mans and do not concern me. Can we not talk about drilling more oil and giving businesses tax cuts?”
He’s seconds away from going full Dalek and shrieking EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
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Let’s do a little background.
- Congress made a debt deal last year; you’ll remember, it was all the squawk on the box. Sad Clown, John Boehner (R-FU), threatened to shut down the government, then agreed to automatic cuts from the military amounting to $80-ish billion. (It had something to do with a Super Committee whose sole purpose was to fail. Never mind that. It happened. It’s over.) You’ll remember Sad Clown Johnny B. saying on CBS News that he “Got 98 percent of what [he] wanted.”
- Now, Sad Clown Boehner (R-BFE) doesn’t want to cut $80-ish billion from war profiteering the defense budget. What about the deal he made? He says forget about that. What he really wants now is to cut $261 billion from food stamps, unemployment, and healthcare for old people.
- The defense budget usually logs in around $660+ billion, and in 2011 and 2012 we’ve actually started flirting with the $1 trillion mark. You’d think we’d be able to find $80 billion in cuts just by ending unpopular, ineffective, dangerous, and just plain unnecessary contracts for weapons we’ve never used and aren’t going to use and might actually kill our own people if we do use them.
Oh, hello there, F-22 Raptor! Have you been standing there this whole time?
When the F-22 Raptor started pre-production in the 1990’s the Government Accountability Office said it was unnecessary. It was designed to fight MIGs, only problem was the USSR collapsed and Russia wasn’t really making new MIGS; they could barely maintain the planes they had. Since the 1990s we’ve shoved about $80 billion (there’s that number again) at the F-22. And we’ve never used it in combat. In fact, when we’ve tested it out with our pilots, we’ve found out it makes them sick so we grounded the entire fleet of those planes. In other news this week, you may have heard that four pilots face reprimand for refusing to fly the plane –yes, it’s that same plane.
(How very 1990s that it’s called the “Raptor” and it’s disappointing and doesn’t work and no one rides in it –like it’s the sad unused Jurassic-Park-themed roller coaster at Magic Mountain sitting there covered in slurpee barf and smelling of sad.)
This makes you wonder how many other high-tech weapons systems we’ve never used or are dangerous to our own people that we could cut. You’d think we’d at least investigate into that possibility before cutting healthcare to old people and food to poor kids. But, alas… Sigh. Sad Clown Johnny Boehner’s fetishes must be satisfied.
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Last week a joint committee involving the offices of ethically-challenged Representative Darrell Issa (R) and quasi-religious/legislative cult member of “The Family,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R) released a report on the gun-walking scandal “Fast and Furious,” or if you’re in Mexico, the much cooler sounding, “Rápido y Furioso!” Which reportedly started under the Bush administration and continued at a lively pace under Obama and his DOJ honcho, Eric Holder.
Since Grassley and Issa would love to stick the DOJ (and by extension Obama) with this warm bag of dogshit you can imagine that the report might be wholly partisan. That doesn’t mean it’s not true and it doesn’t mean that it is. The report relies heavily on the account of one whistleblower, Carlos Canino. And the Obama administration hasn’t responded to the report, or taken the opportunity to bring forth their own witnesses and evidence. All it really shows is Issa and Grassley have a witness from the inside who repeatedly tried to run this up the flagpole and got shut down from his chain-of-command. It doesn’t say if Eric Holder was involved or if Rápido y Furioso was an autonomous program run by local ATF agents in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas without input from D.C.
But holy shit is it a wild-ass read!
Let me say this, the whole thing sounds like a bad action movie written by Mike Seaver’s friend, Boner Stabone. (“We’ll wrap these automatic assault rifles up in big red bows and hand them over to the teeming throngs of murderous drug cartels. What could possibly go wrong?”)
In one section, the report details an incident in which Mexican drug-runners shoot down a helicopter. A fucking helicopter!
A May 2011 shootout between Mexican police and cartel members demonstrates the broadening impact of Operation Fast and Furious. On May 24, 2011, La Familia DTO gunmen forced a Federal Police helicopter to make an emergency landing in the state of Michoacan, located in western Mexico. The gunmen attacked the helicopter, wounding two officers onboard and forcing the aircraft to land near the scene of the attack.
After detailing that incident, the report reveals a connection between the missing guns and the murder of a prominent Chihuahua lawyer named Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez.
At the time of the kidnapping, his sister Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez was the Attorney General of the state of Chihuahua in northwestern Mexico. A few days after the kidnapping, a video surfaced on the Internet in which Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez sat handcuffed, surrounded by five heavily armed men wearing masks, dressed in camouflage and bullet-proof vests.
On November 5, 2010, Mexican authorities found Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez’s body in a shallow grave. Shortly after this grisly discovery, the Mexican federal police engaged in a shootout with drug cartel members, which resulted in the arrest of eight suspects. Police seizedsixteen weapons from the scene of the shootout. Two of these weapons traced back to Operation Fast and Furious.
As tenuous a connection as this is (“Shortly after this happened something else happened!” isn’t much of a connection) it’s still not looking good for this “put out the fire with gasoline” approach to drug gang border skirmishes. Obama and Holder can only hope that this doesn’t break into the national conversation on security and our insane pursuit of a war on drugs. (Although, I’m not holding out for the GOP presidential challengers to actually use facts about bad policy to attack Obama, they’re usually too busy making up boogeyman stories about how he’s a Secular Muslim or an elite European Socialist to pay attention to things that are, you know, true.)
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