A consistent point of broad outrage in the unfolding saga of the government bailout of the big banks has been has been the money paid out by these same banks — literally billions — in bonuses to the top bankers and brokers in the banks themselves. So public money goes to failing banks and some of that money is used by the bankers to keep their payscales very high and reward themselves with fat bonuses. That’s the way it works.
Thanks to Eddy Laing for drawing attention to the following (from the NY Times), which adds the latest news on all this.
Big Banks Paid Billions in Bonuses Amid Wall St. Crisis
By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH
Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.
Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.
At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.
The report is certain to intensify the growing debate over how, and how much, Wall Street bankers should be paid. Read the rest of this entry »
From The Progressive Wednesday, July 29, 2009 (posted on the “Who is John Towery” site). Thanks to Koba for the suggestion. Posting here on Kasama does not imply endorsement of the analysis.
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now just broke a story that is a piece of a larger puzzle: and that puzzle is the spying on dissidents right here in the United States.
This time it was done by someone working for the U.S. military, which may be illegal.
It happened out in Olympia, Washington, where a guy who went by the name of John Jacob infiltrated a group of anarchists working with Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Militarization Resistance. This went on for a couple of years.
When the activists found him out just last week, they were shocked.
“John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine,” Brendan Maslauskas Dunn told Amy Goodman. “We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle.”
This video was accompanied by the following explanation:
“The concept of caste has existed in South Asia for millennia. Though this socio-religious hierarchy had originated as a method of “division of labor”, it has, in the modern age, served as a means of subjugation and disempowerment — especially for the lowest strata in the caste system, the Dalit.
After the 2008 constituent assembly elections the United Communist Party of Nepal (formerly the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist) became the largest elected body in Nepal’s transitional government. In May of 2009, the UCPN decided to sack the Chief of Army Staff General Katawal due to his refusal to follow orders on multiple occasions. Hours after the decision he was reinstated by the ceremonial President, causing the UCPN to withdraw completely from the government. Over the past two months the UCPN has been engaged in intense debate over what their next steps are to be, and whether to include a “people’s revolt” in those next steps. This appears to be the first time Pushpa Dahal (Prachanda), the party chairman, has stepped out publicly in favor of this option (assuming this report has fairly characterized his position).
This article was published on Telegraph Nepal. Thanks to Ka Frank for pointing it out.
Nepal Maoists determined for waging final Peoples’ Revolt
TGW
The Unified Nepal Communist Party-Maoist is preparing to lead a new peoples’ revolt.
Miles Ahead suggested posting the following report from Friends of Peltier:
Greetings from Lewisburg, PA.
As you know, Leonard’s parole hearing was today. The attorney Eric Seitz is very hopeful about the outcome of the hearing.
The government brought nothing new to the table and made it clear that their position is that Leonard should never be released despite his being eligible for parole. That, of course, is about nothing but revenge.
Peter Matthiessen (“In the Spirit of Crazy Horse“) was a witness today. He’s attended many of the hearings, appeals, etc., over the years. He felt the examiner was attentive and open to what was being said on Leonard’s behalf. He’s also feeling positive.
We’re also told Leonard handled the Q&A (for about 45 minutes) very well.
Ka Frank suggested the following on the parole hearing and the demonstration outside it (from The Daily Item). Leonard Peltier is a prominent and much beloved political prisoner who just faced his first possibility of parole in many years.
Rally calls for justice for Leonard Peltier
By Brett R. Crossley
LEWISBURG July 28, 2009 – Protesters lined the southwest corner of Route 15 and William Penn Drive to fight for the release of Leonard Peltier as his second parole hearing was held Tuesday afternoon.
“The reason we are here is to bring attention to the illegal, immoral and unjust incarceration of Leonard Peltier that has been going on for 35 years,” said Dave Hill, organizer of the protest. “Today, there is a parole hearing, and he could be freed this time. We are here in solidarity with the people trying to free him, and we are here in solidarity with Leonard Peltier.”
Peltier, who is serving two life sentences for the deaths of two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is being held in the Lewisburg Penitentiary. William Penn Drive leads to the institution in Kelly Township, Union County.
I don’t live that far from Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., just outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are daytime break-ins in homes in my neighborhood from time to time. My wife and I recently encountered a woman in our neighborhood on the street who was very agitated and asked to use my cell phone to call 911 because she thought her apartment building was being broken into. We waited as the police arrived; it turned out to be a false alarm. The robbers were movers for another tenant. The woman was Latino or Black, I’m white, my wife Japanese, the cops Black and white. This sort of anxiety and also ethnic situation is not so unusual in the area.
Propagandhi is an Anarchist Canadian punk band formed in 1986. They regularly speak to issues relating to Capitalism, gender, veganism, empire, and a multitude of other social issues. Click here for their myspace to listen to more of their new album Supporting Caste.
It is an outrage that a Black man can be arrested in his own house — first suspected of being a burglar, then manhandled merely for speaking up for himself, in his own living room.
It is an outrage that a cop demands that Gates “step outside,” while six cop cars pull in.
It is an outrage that Gates is accused of disorderly conduct (inside his own house? with speech? completely sober? without a crowd?) Isn’t the real crime here asserting ordinary rights, protesting the cop’s assumption of criminal behavior from a Black man, asking to see the cop’s ID? What is the deference demanded by the cops, and what is the living yassirboss significance of that for Black people?
It is an outrage that the policeman’s association insists that everything was done by the book. Doesn’t THAT confirm that such harassment is routine and occurs daily, hourly, minute-by-minute in this country?
Coalminers in Appalachia waged a fierce 10-year movement of illegal walkouts called wildcat strikes, starting in the late 1960s. Tens of thousands of miners repeatedly confronting the federal and state authorities, the courts, the police, the mine owners, the media, and their own top union officials. Most strikes involved individual mines and local grievances – and lasted a day or two. But especially after 1974, some strikes started to spread from mine to mine, county to county, state to state – challenging government policies and court repression. The hard fought strikes lasted for weeks. The leadership of these strikes was entirely at the grassroots, among the working miners and sometimes the local elected leaders at their mines.
This was one of greatest upsurges of working class struggle in modern U.S. history. And yet it is virtually unknown.
Kasama is publishing a five part series on communist political work in the miners’ strike wave of the 1970s. We will be posting one piece a day over the next few days.
Ambush at Keystone:
Inside the Coalminers’ Great Gas Protest of 1974
Part 5: The Bullets of Hidden Gunmen
By Mike Ely
Two days later, the picket meeting was very small. Charles and I volunteered to go over Gary Mountain, south to Bishop on the Virginia state line – where, according to a rumor, some miners were threatening to scab. A crew from Pinnacle Creek went to picket Keystone No. 1. And that was about all our picket movement was capable of that night.
It was a long drive over that mountain. Charlie and I hid my VW bug on a side road, and walked to Bishop’s mine entrance. We stood there for an hour at shift change. No one came or went. Perhaps the rumors were wrong.
As we were about to leave, a man walked up. He whispered quickly that he was the son of a local sheriff. And he warned us that we were going to be tailed after leaving. A roadblock was planned for us on the lonely stretch to Gary.
They planned to beat us hard before taking us to jail. We thanked him (as you can imagine).
As soon as he left, two cop cars pulled up across from us and turned off their lights.
It is called “Prachanda Path Jindabad” — the word Jindabad (which is a refrain throughout the song) is a word of celebration and support (sometimes translated “Long Live,” and often meaning “Up With…”) Prachanda Path is the strategies and ideologies developed by the Nepali Maoists in their current revolution.
Obviously part of what is fascinating about this video is the form — i.e. the use and transformation of the kinds of song-and-dance numbers characteristic of “Bollywood” (the Indian film industry). A big issue in the Nepali revolution is how to view the influence of Indian culture, and obviously a big issue in any revolution is the depiction of women (in dance and film). So this video gives us a glimpse of how this cultural troop of Nepal’s Maoists is working on such controversies of synthesis and expression.
TellNoLies wrote in a comment on “Ambush at Keystone #1” about Maoist organizing in the coalfields during the 1970s:
“One thing I’d like to know more about is the prologue: how you guys got these jobs and moved into these communities without being immediately detected as the former student radical outside communist agitators that you were. Was this easy or hard to do? How did you explain yourselves when you applied for these jobs? Were there any other tricks involved? I’m presuming that at least some of you had already attracted the attention of federal authorities in your earlier SDS activities.”
I took a few days to think over your question.
Working to Transform Ourselves into Communists
There was in that period, say 1970-75, circles of radical student activists moving toward Maoism who took up what-we-called “proletarianization” — i.e. preparing ourselves (as best we could) to do work outside familiar left and student circles, and preparing to be able to connect with working class people (and especially working class youth.) To become communists.
Where we were, the communist circles would divide — with some people joining the Revolutionary Union (RU) and another group attracted to the October League (Marxist-Leninist), and others going in still more directions. But this process of proletarianization was something that all of us were taking up in various ways (even while many of these activists were still on campus).
Leonard Peltier, the political prisoner imprisoned for more than 30 years, will have his first parole hearing in 15 years this Tuesday, on July 28.
For more information the several sites devoted to this miliant of the Native peoples struggle, his political life, his outrageous persecution and frameup (here and here, and on Kasama.
The parole hearing will be held in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and this will also be the site of a protest and vigil. More informartion here.
A sunrise prayer vigil and rally will also be held in San Francisco, at the Federal Building 450 Golden Gate Avenue, beginning at 6am and continuing until 3pm.
* * * * * *
Following is a letter recently written by Leonard Peltier to friends and supporters.
Greetings my friends and relatives,
I want to start off this statement or speech or whatever you want to call it by saying again as I’ve said before thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting me and for standing up for right wherever you are. I can’t express to you in words how extremely grateful I am not just to the people of America but to the people all over the world who have supported the cause of Indian people and myself.
Kasama is publishing a five part series on communist political work in the miners’ strike wave of the 1970s. We will be posting one piece a day over the next few days.
Ambush at Keystone #1:
Inside the Coalminers’ Great Gas Protest of 1974
Part 4: Things Start to Crack
By Mike Ely
By the time the strike was two weeks old, the situation was incredibly tense. The state authorities were determined to simply crush the strike by hitting our picket movement hard. Miners broadly wanted to win, but as the days passed more workers felt desperate to return to work. That gave a new wind to the more conservative, law-abiding, and fearful among the workers.
Bucket or Suitcase!
The Welch papers started highlighting what they called “the bucket or suitcase movement.” They featured a rally held in Keystone where some miners wives were (supposedly) speaking out against the strike, and calling their husbands cowards for being intimidated by “a few radicals.” They showed a picture of someone waving a suitcase – since this supposed “movement” called on women to present their husbands with an ultimatum: take your bucket of food and water (to go to work), or take the suitcase with your clothes in (and get kicked out of the house). Women were encouraged to put a lunch bucket and a suitcase side by side next to the front door.
Street Sweeper Social Club is Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine) and Boots Riley (formerly of the Coup). (Thanks to the Marxist-Leninist).
