O-15

Chris Hedges hits it out of the park in Times Square. I'm old enough to know why he chokes up at the end. Occasionally I've felt the same way while watching the feeds. Because my generation -- those of us born in the shadow of the decades-long American decline, who are old enough to remember the Cold War -- failed to stop neoliberalism, until it nearly wrecked the world.

Well, maybe failure is too strong a word. "We tried to warn them, but the Administrator just wouldn't listen", as a famous line in Valve's Half Life (1998) put it. This Empire (and its semi-peripheral clones) was an immovable weight on this planet's neck for thirty-five years.

Now that weight is shifting. Most of those semi-peripheral clones have been swept away, and the final redoubts of Empire -- the ones Americans have been carrying around in their minds for centuries -- are now beginning to totter. Just as Egyptian soldiers left their barracks and joined the Arab Spring, Sgt. Shamar Thomas came back from the Middle East and delivered this amazing lesson in civic patriotism.

Something magical is happening, something which happens only once in a lifetime. Zizek gets it right: the protests are a new kind of ink, the digital ink out of which the 99% will begin to reshape the destiny of this planet.

All births are deeply sacred moments, and this one has its own special elixir of joy, anxiety and wonder. You can almost see the vast, skyscraper-sized shapes of Bearzilla, Pandazilla, and Brazilla off in the mist, singing and chortling and greeting some new arrivals: the people of Tunis, the workers of Cairo, the lions of the desert who defeated North Africa's Mussolini, and so many others... 

Neon Genesis Europa

During one of the most mysterious and revelatory moments of Hideaki Anno's 1995 anime series "Neon Genesis Evangelion", namely near the end of Episode 24, two gigantic mechas, one symbolizing the developmental state and the other Euroliberalism, wage a life-and-death struggle which will determine the fate of humanity. They crash through barrier after barrier just like the Great Recession has crashed through one financial tranche after another, one failed ringfence after another, one failed bailout after another, accompanied by the stirring chorale of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" (original epic footage here from 15:00 to 24:15).

I always thought the end was an allegory of the passing of neoliberalism: no apocalyptic battle, just the realization that somehow, through millions of acts of individual survival (symbolized by the refusal of Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami to give up), change was possible. Madrid staged its own deeply inspiring retake of this moment here.

Signs and Portents

For years, I had to scour the nether reaches of the global airwaves to find any traces of dissent in the Neoliberal Ice Age.

But suddenly, faint cracks have appeared in the ice. Tremors are running through the ground, telegraphing earthquakes to come.

On Bill Maher, some of Wall Street's hired clowns scurried and sneered for half an hour. But suddenly Alan Grayson stood up for the 99%. The crowd delivered a standing ovation.

Hersi shows what dignity is all about. (Much love and a shout out to PoetNation.)

And the heartbeat of the Resistance keeps on.

We Are the 99%

Just read the stories. The pain level in this country has risen past the point of no return.


Such immense suffering across this land. Wounded bodies, wounded hearts, wounded minds. But instead of healing, there is just more violence. Viciousness disguised as self-interest, narrowness disguised as market access, brutality disguised as market discipline.

We must learn to be better than our past.

Neoliberalism: The Video

My own take on neoliberalism, a.k.a. Wall Street financial fundamentalism, a.k.a. the plutocracy of the 1%.

BRIC-ology

I wrote on September 24 that the BRICS were cooking up a little surprise for the plutocrats who pretend to run the world-system.

Here you go.

How did I know? No secret documents or high-tech decryption streams were necessary. The train of Eurasian integration left the station in the summer of 2008 and has been gathering speed ever since.

Ammo Pack

I can't be in New York, but I can at least suggest poster slogans:


We're the 99%

and we want our planet back

Jail the Thieves!

"Hosni Mubarak" Is Arabic For Goldman Sachs

Steal $100, you're a criminal

Steal $14 trillion, you're Wall Street

Arab Spring, Libyan Summer...

New York Autumn!