Citigroup's 2006 Declaration of "Plutonomy"

Per Bill Moyers (see vidi below), the term was coined by Citgroup in 2005 to refer to "an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer, with government on their side."

The following spring, Citigroup issued a memo to their wealthy investors in which they actually stated flat out that favorable treatment by governments had allowed the "plutonomists" to take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years and that the top 10%, esp. the top 1%, have benefitted disproportionately at the relative expense of labor. See for yourself :

(Thanks, Ben!)

A Useful Summary of Recent Police Violence Against Protesters in the US

. . . is available on Alternet (with visuals).

Great Signs from Today's Gov. Scott Walker Recall Rally in WI

More photos here.

Per the Brookfield Patch, 25,000 to 30,000 showed up at the rally, and organizers say they've collected more than 105,000 signatures on recall petitions.

The Day After the Pepper-Spraying at U.C. Davis

Another one I've got to re-blog. As Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing put it,

I thought I wouldn't see a more dramatic video than the ones yesterday of the pepper-spraying of students by police at UC Davis [see video of the spraying, here]. I was wrong.

In the video [below in this post] UC Davis students [silently] confront Chancellor Linda Katehi just one day after the incident. It's hard to tell exactly how many of them are present, but there they are, a huge crowd. They're seated in the same . . . position [on the ground, with crossed legs and linked arms] their fellow students were [in] yesterday just before Lt. John Pike pulled out a can of pepper-spray and pulled the trigger.

From lhfang86, the guy who shot the video:

A press conference, scheduled for 2:00pm between the UC Davis Chancellor and police on campus, did not end at 2:30. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage. A group of highly organized students formed large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms.

As Ye Reap . . .

From the Yes Men:

Massive 24-hour DRUM CIRCLE and JAM SESSION party starting tomorrow, Sunday at 2pm, outside Mayor Bloomberg's personal townhouse: 17 East 79th Street.

Tie-dye, didgeridoo, hackeysack welcome! No shirt, no shoes, no problem! And if you don't have talent, don't worry: FREE DRUM LESSONS offered! Also on offer: collaborative drumming with the police!

Even though this is a 24-hour drum circle, don't be late! The mayor loves evictions. Who knows what'll happen? In any case, there'll be an afterparty in world-famous Central Park right afterwards.

Please spread this announcement (www.yeslab.org/drumcircle) as far and fast as you can!

I.M.H.O. (re- OWS & Wikileaks),

. . . Wikileaks has played a key role in drawing the veil from people's eyes around the world about what their governments have been doing to them at the behest of the 1%.

I think a lot of people knew in their hearts that things weren't right; but in country after country, WL disclosed the indisputable proof: what authorities themselves were telling each other about what they were doing.

I believe Assange escalated disclosure at the time and in the manner he did because the 1% is progressing rapidly in their efforts to gain effective control over the internet. If he'd waited much longer, it might have been too late.

(Image upper right from Al Jazeera via worldbank.org, shot in Tahrir Square; image right from OregonLive, shot on N17 in Portland. For more re- Assange's and others' thinking about the infowar, see Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar.)

FOIA Request for Info on Nationwide Crackdown on OWS

One observer has suggested that the real reason for the crackdown on the Occupy camps was that "[t]he camps were the beginnings of a community . . . the community needed for a culture of resistance." Highly ironic if, as seems likely (see, e.g., here and here), the Obama's administration was instrumental in coordinating the crackdown.

Civil liberties groups have filed a FOIA request for info: "'The severe crackdown on the occupation movement appears to be part of a national strategy to crush the movement,' said Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice and the co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Mass Defense Committee. 'This multi-jurisdictional coordination shows that the crackdown is supremely political.'" More at Common Dreams.

What Happened to the OWS-er's Property

When the NYPD evicted the OWS-er's camp from Liberty Square (f.k.a. Zuccotti Park), the property was reportedly tossed into garbage trucks and dump trucks; but the reality may be worse. Motherboard suggests the laptops look like they were attacked with a baseball bat (but not, one imagines, before their contents had been downloaded; note the label scrawled on the blue laptop). (More info and pics at Motherboard.)

(Yes, any deliberate destruction of property or unreasonable search of the laptops would be, like the NYPD's defiance of the court order to allow the OWS-er's back into the park, against the law.)