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Why Chavez chose social safety net over skyscrapers March 11, 2013

Since news broke last week of the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, reactions to that leader’s passing have been pouring in. While many argue that Chavez did incredible things for Venezuela and its people, there are those, especially here in the US, who don’t have such a rosy view of the former leader.

That’s where Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson comes in.

In a piece from last Tuesday, speaking about the legacy of Chavez, Sampson wrote that, “Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”

You heard that right.

Sampson appears to be arguing that providing healthcare, education and employment opportunities for millions of people is far less important than flaunting your wealth for the entire world to see. Lifting an entire nation out of crippling poverty is nothing compared to building a big glitzy building or opening up a new museum.

Now, if these were the feelings of just one journalist, we could move on. But the problem is that these sentiments are echoed throughout our country. Oil corporations have become so powerful and influential in our society that the idea of nationalizing our oil and using the money from it – the way the Venezuelans, the Saudis, and the Norwegians (among others) do – to help the American people is, according to conventional wisdom, crazy and absurd.

This is the reason why, up until Chavez’s death, the U.S and Venezuela had frosty relations at best. Chavez’s decision to use his nation’s vast sums of oil wealth to help his people, instead of adding to the bottom-lines of corporations, irked many U.S. politicians and government officials. But what’s really going on here? Why do so many Americans believe that corporate luxury is more important than “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

In a society, achieving safety and security is step one.

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans achieved safety and security by giving it to others, and getting it in return. And similarly, the more safety and security you gave to people, the higher status you achieved. Archeologists call societies like this “Potlatch societies,” as status is gained by giving away as much as you can at giant feasting parties called Potlatches.

This is only a slight variation on the model that Hugo Chavez used in Venezuela, and it’s why his people loved him so much. By using his nation’s oil wealth to give Venezuelans access to education, healthcare, improved housing and better living conditions, Chavez gave safety and security to millions of people, and was rewarded with high levels of admiration and respect.

The late professor of Native American studies at UC Davis, Jack Forbes, told me his people called it wetiko, a Native American word meaning “cannibal” or “thief.” In western society (with a culture dominated by capitalism), we get safety and security from making money, and then using that to buy goods and services. The more goods and services you produced, the more you were paid, and the more you were paid, the more you were able to purchase to help achieve safety and security.

This is the model that America has today. And, in its extremely mentally ill form, it’s why some billionaires say things like “I only have $30 billion. Once I have $40 billion, I’ll be happy.” And it’s why Americans might think that shiny skyscrapers are more important than the social welfare of an entire nation.

But let’s look at the numbers behind these two approaches to safety and security.

Before Hugo Chavez was president, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, unemployment in Venezuela was at 15%. As of 2009, it was at 7.6 %.

Before Hugo Chavez was president, extreme poverty was at 23.4%. As of 2011, it was at 8.5%

Meanwhile, here in the United States, millions of Americans are consistently unemployed each year. And, in the last 15 years, extreme poverty in the United States has doubled. The number of U.S. households living on less than $2 per person a day, which is known as the “extreme poverty” line, more than doubled between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million

And, according to the latest Census Bureau data, a staggering 50 percent of Americans are either low-income or living below the poverty line.

The numbers here paint a pretty clear picture: The Chavez approach to governance, and his Robin Hood-esque mentality worked for Venezuela.

During 14 years in office, Chavez managed to drastically improve the lives of Venezuelans, while rebuilding an entire nation. He knew that the best way to achieve safety and security was not by constructing lavish buildings, but through maintaining a strong social safety net and ensuring that Venezuelans had the resources they needed to survive.

America should take a page out of the Chavez playbook.

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Galaxy Code - Sick Love Song (Re-release) http://jkne.bandcamp.com/track/sick-love-song

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Amateur solar astronomer Andrew Devey was filming the surfacing of the sun when an airplane shot through his field of view. Incredible.

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Awkward Inbox - Take It Up (by jkne dubs)

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We don’t hurt anyone The human’s work is never done You’re only here once so make sure you have fu... We love with all our hearts, We call the greed unfair, We let the information run free, We overthrow the oppressors. They drive consumerist values, Through psychological tv, Then you desire from slaves in China, Then lose your money to the evil corporations, What if everything you were taught was wrong, And animals are murdered for meat, So can you please yourself, Like a supreme being. You take it up with us. Watch out capital man, You don’t represent me, You spend the money on weapons, While Earth is losing its trees, All for selfish gain, Only thinking of yourself, The world world burns but you could help, Cut back or drown yourself. You take it up with us.

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thepeoplesrecord:

Justice for PayPal WikiLeaks protesters: Why DDoS is free speech January 23, 2013

There is no weapon on the planet more powerful than speech.

In recent years, the digital revolution has led to new and unique ways for people to express themselves, and speech has flourished around the world, bringing it closer together. As a lawyer and as someone who promotes the advancement of individual liberties, I was fascinated by the advent of online speech, which was quickly followed by the advent of online protest.

While affixing your e-signature to an online petition is a new and somewhat direct way to “petition your government for a redress of grievances”, I am most concerned with advocating for more immediate and effective manners of protest. So naturally, I was interested when, in December 2010, the hacktivist collective Anonymous voiced their displeasure with PayPal, over that company’s part in the banking blockade of Wikileaks.

A reported 10,000 protesters around the world took to the internet with a protest method known as DDoS (distributed denial of service) – the functional equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a computer. With enough people refreshing enough times, the site is flooded with traffic, slowed, or even temporarily knocked offline. No damage is done to the site or its backing computer system; and when the protest is over, the site resumes business as usual.

This is not “hacking”. It is protest, and it is speech.

True, customers of the site are temporarily inconvenienced, but democracy is often messy and inconvenient. Moreover, the voice of your fellow citizen should always be worth slowing down to hear for a moment. Exposure to new or differing views enriches us all. Such was the case with the 2010 PayPal DDoS protest.

Or it was … until the United States government decided to serve 42 warrants and indict 14 protesters. While protest charges have typically been seen as tantamount to nuisance crimes, like trespassing or loitering, these were different. The 14 PayPal defendants, some of whom were teenagers when the protest occurred, find themselves looking at 15 years in federal prison – for exercising their free speech rights; for redressing their grievances to PayPal, a major corporation; for standing up for what they believed was right.

Instead of being handed a $50 fine, as one would face for traditional protest crimes such as a sit-in, the PayPal defendants’ freedoms are in real jeopardy. To address this situation, there was some more traditional, yet still modern speech aimed at the White House. An online petition has been launched, asking that DDoS be treated as speech – a concept I wholeheartedly support. Being mindful that all protest must be reasonable in time, place, and manner, I believe that there is room in cyberspace, indeed in the world, for this type of protest activity.

The example of the PayPal protest provides a good analogy for why DDoS is speech. In the 1960s, civil rights protesters went to the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the segregated American south because they sought to make a point by asserting their right to buy a simple meal – much as protesters went to PayPal because they wanted to donate to WikiLeaks. In Woolworth’s, the protesters made plain their goal: “If you serve me a meal, I will eat it, pay for it, and then I will leave.” This concept was lost on the Jim Crow south, so protest became necessary.

Certainly, our contemporary situation is a long way from that struggle against deep, historic injustice – no one suggests otherwise – but the analogy is apt nonetheless. Thousands of PayPal protesters said, via their protest speech in DDoS form: “I want to make a donation to WikiLeaks; I’ll take up my bandwidth to do that, then I’ll leave. You’ll make money, I’ll feel fulfilled, everyone wins.”

Alas, PayPal and its parent company, eBay, were not in the win-win business. They were in the censorship business, which is not somethingAnonymous suffers lightly – especially as PayPal has a history of taking donations for questionable organizations, like the National Vanguard (a national socialist group) and Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality (an anti-LGBT group), yet won’t process donations for WikiLeaks.

So, it came to pass that thousands of displeased people, all around the globe, expressed their outrage via a DDoS protest. All the PayPal protesters did was take up some bandwidth. PayPal claimed – almost as a cry of victory – that their site never even went offline. In that example, DDoS was used as an almost pure form of protest expression – therefore it was speech and should be recognized and protected as such. The law should be changed.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is thus being used to stifle new and creative forms of online expression. This type of harmless creative protest should be encouraged: our nation was built upon the principles of free speech. If the founders of this great nation saw its laws abused, as when applied to these minor protests, I think they would be shocked and offended.

Our best and brightest should be encouraged to find new methods of expression; direct action in protest must not stifled. The dawning of the digital age should be seen as an opportunity to expand our knowledge, and to collectively enhance our communication. Government should have the greatest interest in promoting speech – especially unpopular speech. The government should never be used to suppress new and creative – not to mention, effective – methods of speech and expression.

Since the PayPal prosecution, there have been no DDoS protests on that scale. Speech has been chilled.

Supreme court Justice William O Douglas said:

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

Toward that end, it’s time to begin a conversation about acknowledging DDoS as legitimate protest speech, deserving of first amendment protection.

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Boldly going nowhere

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the less you give a damn...

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AND IT’S FUCKING AWESOME!!

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Sarah and Obaid and their infinitely adorable Nusaybah are three lovely Pakistanis who know how hate rolls: It’s taught so it has to be unlearned.

Stop stereotyping. Stop the hate.

P.S. Nusaybah’s smile wins without a doubt.

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You’re already doomed for eternal sleep if you think an outside source is going to wake you up.

(via ikenbot)