OPERATION PAYBACK DEFENDS WIKILEAKS

A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks.

Operation Payback also promised a hack attack on PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks, denying the group a major tool for collecting donations from supporters.

With the financial noose tightening around WikiLeaks even as a legal one tightens around its founder's neck, Operation Payback has effectively declared war on the organizations working to hobble WikiLeaks.

JAPANESE PEACE GROUPS ORGANIZING TO STOP "MISSILE OFFENSE"

Japanese activists have been very busy lately opposing their nation's participation in the U.S. "missile offense" program. Japan (along with South Korea, Taiwan, Australia) is becoming a major deployment site for U.S. systems that are being directed against China and North Korea. In addition the U.S. has been pushing the Japanese government to change their laws to allow for greater Japanese aerospace corporation partnership with U.S. weapons corporations like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin who are selling various so-called "missile defense" (MD) systems worldwide.

According to Global Network board member Makiko Sato in Japan, "The U.S. has for some years urged Japan to lift the ban as it allegedly wants Japan's sophisticated technology in optics and robotics as well as engineering for new MD missiles. The U.S. really wants the optical technology for its control of earth from space, and may want the robotics technology for its new wars for energy hunting. According to the TV news I saw, the U.S. is to deploy heavy, awkward robotic gadgets in real warfare beginning in 2015, so if Japan is to lift the ban, it would horribly change the scene of future warfare, with its skillful humanoid and animal robot technology."

But thanks to Japanese peace movement organizing Makiko reports, "Our prime minister made up his mind that he was not going to include the revision of the ban on weapon exports in the Basic Defense Plan to be issued on 17th, in order to tide over next Diet session with the help of the Social Democratic Party again. So this is small victory. The Basic Defense Plan, which is to be renewed every five years, was to be issued for the next renewal on 10th this month, but has been delayed because of this very agenda of the ban on weapon exports. Citizens have been sending opposition voices to Diet [parliament] members, and even today some Tokyo activists gathered in a Diet building room."

The U.S. has been working overtime to promote major Pentagon military build-ups in Okinawa, Guam, and South Korea by using the North Korea bogeyman as an excuse for this growing militarism in the region that is ultimately directed toward China.

Makiko warns though that her government will not give up. She concludes, "This time it has been avoided, but soon the U.S. and Japanese industry-military complexes will employ next approach. This must be just a lull."

Note: The banners in the photos above from Japan have slogans opposing PAC-3 - it is the Patriot (3rd generation) missile defense system now built by Lockheed Martin.

OBAMA CAVES - SANDERS PROMISES TO FIGHT TAX CUTS FOR RICH IN SENATE

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appeared disgusted Monday over a recently reached deal between the White House and Republicans that would allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to be extended for two years in return for GOP cooperation on the reauthorization of unemployment benefits for a 13-month period, among other concessions.

AFGHAN JAILS GROWING

The number of prisoners in the U.S. detention centre in the Afghan city of Bagram has risen by 40 per cent since the beginning of the year.

Many of the prisoners are thought to be members of the Taliban.

The increase in the number of detainees comes after a surge in U.S. troops in the country.

END OF THE RIDE

My friend Tom Weis has reached Washington DC after his long bike ride from Boulder, Colorado. His 2,500 mile ride was done to promote the vision of a sustainable energy future.

He shares some final thoughts as he approached Washington. His long ride was simply good grassroots organizing and I think he is already lamenting the end of the trip. He's made great connections with thousands of people along the way. I'm certain that he has opened many hearts and minds during his peddle for Mother Earth.

As we cast about for organizing strategies to help make real change, it is creative actions like this that have very big impact. Keep that in mind.

FIRST SNOW

• We are getting our first snow this morning. It's not a huge amount but the lightly swirling white stuff always warms my heart. I went out and played with the wood pile a bit and put snow shovels by all the doors. I'm sitting in the kitchen close to the wood stove - my upstairs office is too cold.

• Maine's Campaign to Bring Our War $$ Home met here this past Saturday and sixteen folks attended from around the state. Several new folks came which is always nice because it reflects growing interest and new energy. Local efforts to hold public forums and pass town resolutions is spreading and some big action ideas were discussed. The Republicans have taken over the state legislature in Maine and our new governor is a tea-bag Republican. They are committed to further dismantling social programs. They promise a revitalized state economy but that is a lark. We intend to keep the war spending issue in front of the state legislature. They are the place that the citizens of Maine will be most focused on during this coming period. We've got to encourage everyone connect the dots.

• I am not surprised by the U.S. effort to shut down the WikiLeaks web site but it sure is a sign of desperation by the empire. The demonizing of Julian Assange (who I admittedly know little about) is being done 24-7 by the corporate dominated media and reveals the brutal nature of the U.S. war machine as much as anything else. They try to spin the release of the information as not that damaging, but then turn around and declare that Assange is a "terrorist" who has done the nation great harm. Taking the 20-year view of this I feel the work of WikiLeaks will be remembered as one more significant step in the dismantling of the dangerous and deadly U.S. killing culture. Keep going WikiLeaks!

• Right on schedule the Dems and Repubs (with a helping hand from the magician) are moving toward a "compromise" to assure the richest in America keep their Bush-era tax cuts. I've seen enough of the Obama campaign speech replays to make me sick where he makes the audience cheer as he throws out the red meat of progressivism - in this case his promise to end tax breaks for the rich. What truly amazes me though is to see the numbers of people on Facebook who still defend "their president" in the face of all his betrayals. Incomprehensible. For those worried about the debt - the $60 billion per year that would be saved by not extending the cuts for the rich would save as much as the elimination of earmarks, a federal pay freeze, a ten percent cut in the federal workforce and a 50 percent cut in foreign aid - combined.
  

• Speaking of the magician and his betrayals, I watched a news clip this morning of him doing his best impersonation of George W. Bush (bomber jacket and all) in front of U.S. troops during his "surprise" visit to Afghanisnam.
  

"You will succeed in your mission," Obama told more than 3,500 cheering troops in a huge hangar. "We said we were going to break the Taliban's momentum. That's what you're doing. You're going on the offense, tired of playing defense."

You can count on the fact that the reason Obama went to Afghanisnam is because support for the war is fading back here on the home front. He knows he must keep "selling" the war to the troops and the public at large. For those of you who are interested in seeing Bush reincarnated in action take a look below:

SUNDAY SONG

I need a day off......a holiday

POLICE BEAT PEOPLE IN EGYPT WATCHING VOTE COUNTING

In the city of Mahalla the crowds had gathered in a football stadium to look on as Egypt's parliamentary votes were being counted to ensure that the counting would not be rigged. The city was already tense after several polling stations were illegally shut. Violence has marred Egypt's parliamentary elections with hundreds of opposition supporters battling police at vote counting stations. There are no exit polls to indicate who is likely to win the vote, but what most people predict is more clashes and violence regardless of who the winner is.

MORE WIKILEAKS FALLOUT

CANADA CARRIES WATER FOR ISRAEL

Seen as an honest-broker in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Canada has become one of Israel's most fervent supporters. Avi Lewis investigates.

CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE

CHILEAN ECONOMIST SAYS IT SIMPLE & CLEAR

Democracy Now speaks with the acclaimed Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics.

"Economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty," Max-Neef says.

NEW ORGANIZING STRATEGY IS NEEDED

Mainers rally at the state capital in Augusta to launch the Bring Our War $$ Home campaign in January, 2010

I taped another edition of my public access TV show, This Issue, today. I've just completed my 7th year of broadcasting the program that plays on eight TV stations across Maine.

My guests this time were Alexandra Valenti and Nicole Moreau who both attend the University of Maine-Farmington. They are leaders of the new peace group at UMF called PAINT (Peace Activists in Training). Both of them were heavily involved in the recent Veterans for Peace walk through our state that brought the cost of the wars to the public's attention. They both did an excellent job on the TV show and I will be anxious to get it posted on the Internet so many others can see them in action.

One exciting thing for me was when Alex told me that she regularly reads this blog and found the interview with Professor Crotty the other day useful and is going to use it to help her write a paper for her economic class. Very nice.

Last night I was on a national conference call to discuss the growing movement that is making the connection between endless war spending and economic collapse here at home. People from coast-to-coast were on the call and they shared what they have been doing locally around this concern. It is clear that Maine's Campaign to Bring Our War $$ Home is a model of sorts for other groups around the nation who are just beginning to move into this particular organizing focus.

There were a couple of comments on the call that troubled me and I wanted to share that with readers of this blog. Several people (they appeared to be folks who call themselves Progressive Democrats) were talking about the need to get some "legislation drafted" in Washington that could then be used to rally around as a key organizing strategy.

I was a bit surprised to hear this because at this time even the casual political observer would recognize that with the recent Republican victories across the nation that politics in America is being devolved to the state legislatures and local communities. We will now be facing both political gridlock in Washington and the capitulation of Obama to the demands of the Republican Party to dismantle social progress in America. Even now during this "lame duck" session, while the Democrats still control Congress, they can't even get an extension of unemployment insurance passed. So how could a serious movement focus on the coming black hole in Washington and still be effective, inspiring, or most importantly, strategically sound?

The action in the coming next few years is going to be at the state capitols and in our local city councils and school boards. Those are the political bodies that are going to have virtually every social responsibility dumped on them without any resources. The Republicans, who want to end "big government", are going to pull the plug on every social program they can. Thus people will be turning to their local government bodies for help and they are going to be told - there is no money to help you.

Real organizing is going to need to happen locally and at the statewide level. Coalitions of teachers, students, workers, peaceniks, unemployed, people without health care, and others who are being cut loose will need to be brought together on the statewide level. These coalitions must then call on local and state politicians to demand an end to war spending so that those wasted billions every month can be invested back into our communities to deal with the growing economic crisis.

In other words our ability to impact the politicians in Washington is going to dramatically diminish. Thus our energies and our voices should increasingly be directed on local politicians who will be feeling the pressure every day from the growing masses of unemployed and displaced. If we play our cards right, those politicians will soon enough begin to speak out against war spending because they will recognize that returning those wasted $$ will be the only way to help alleviate the fiscal crisis here at the local level.

Pushing some ill-fated legislative package in Washington might make activists feel good but it is not going to inspire folks or create much energy at the grassroots where people will be daily struggling with survival issues in their communities.

The progressive community does not do "strategic thinking" very well. Many national progressive groups, based in Washington DC and funded by foundations that are most often linked to the Democratic Party, have to try to focus grassroots work on the Washington black hole in order to justify their existence and their continued funding. Thus they are not really in support of pushing the foundation money down to hire local organizers to work on these local issues. It cuts them out of the picture and their job is to be gate-keepers to stand between the grassroots and the Democratic Party.

I've been saying these kinds of things since 1995 when I wrote a piece for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice newsletter called "A Strategy for the Future". In that article I said:

I've got an idea. I think we should demand that the Washington DC based progressive groups (unions, women, gays & lesbians, peace, environmental, social justice, people of color, senior citizens, disabled) all get together and develop a 10-year national organizing plan.

We should demand these groups skeletonize their expensive Washington operations and pool those dollars as seed money to build a base that would, in time, begin to change America.

When I say "skeletonize" what I mean is this: Stop paying all those expensive rents on those lobby offices. Stop introducing legislation that will be compromised even before it is written. Stop paying lobbyists to fight the losing battle in Congress. Stop asking the "folks back home" to get letters into Congress. My research shows me that they're not writing. (Many have given up hope.)

Instead I suggest we take the money saved by my skeletonized DC plan (we would keep a small team of lobbyists in Washington - say two or three - just so we could have one office open with a phone and a computer) and hire grassroots organizers by the thousands around the nation who would implement the national grassroots campaign. The campaign would be centered around the local realities that people face. We would seek to involve local people in issues that affect their lives from day to day. We'd organize campaigns around health care, education, fixing roads and bridges, and cleaning up the local water system. We'd fight for more job training money. We'd call for conversion of the military-industry complex. We would run folks for local offices, using the energies that would be unleashed when people saw their allies moving together all over the nation.

Once each year state conventions would be held followed by regional conventions. At these events the collective demands of the people would be voiced. We want health care. We want clean water. We want jobs!

I know what would happen next. The ground would shake. The sky would rumble. The Democrats would find a backbone, or a very strong third party would be formed. The politicians would begin to write legislation. Our two or three lobbyists in Washington would tell us so. A bill would be passed to create jobs and the military budget would be cut to pay for it.

I wrote the above soon after Newt Gingrich took over as Speaker of the House the last time the Republicans threw the Democrats out of power in Congress. Not much has changed during the last 15 years - in fact the issues are the same except now things are getting worse. The organizing strategy of the progressive community has not changed one iota. The Washington DC strategy still trumps all other comers.

Some say we can do it all - do local work and still maintain a Washington legislative strategy that keeps the DC groups relevant. I say it's a mistake. We can't fund both approaches. We don't have the local energy for both. We have to fish or cut bait.

We need to talk more about this. Let's not wait another 15 years to get started.

UNEMPLOYED CAST ASIDE BY OBAMA & REPUBLICANS

Unemployment insurance is set to run out on two million Americans while the Democrats appear to be poised to cut a deal with the Republicans to extend tax cuts for the already bloated rich. Which political party is the enemy of the working class and poor people in America? How about both of them.

I heard one commentator say that the Democrats have the public overwhelmingly on their side in opposition to more tax cuts for the rich. But instead of using that power in tough negotiations with the Republicans, Obama has once again caved in without getting anything in return. It is obvious to me that Obama is either the most absolutely incompetent president ever (even George W. Bush was good at holding out for what he wanted) or else Obama is nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. You decide. Either way we are in big trouble.

But why in hell is his party allowing him to cut the legs out from under the working people in this country? Why is Obama's party allowing him to continually reward the fat cats at the time that people are being thrown out of work and literally out of their homes? Unbelievable.

People are starting to call the Congress the "Millionaires Club" as we today have more super-rich people there than ever before. As Sen. Bernie Sanders says below in his speech before the Senate (he's one of the few non-millionaires there) we are now facing a return to the days where capitalists had free reign over the lives of the people. The gains of the working class are now under wholesale attack by the greedy rich. Sadly there is no political party that will stand (like Sen. Sanders is doing) and fight for the people against the interests of the wealthy.

I think the message is clear. If you want someone to fight for you, you'd better begin to fight for yourselves. Organize and fight against the rich because they have declared a full scale war on you and have taken over both political parties in this country.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent/Socialist from Vermont)

STUDENT TRILLION $$$$ VIDEO CONTEST

Students across the nation have been making videos as part of a contest called "If I had a Trillion $$$$."

Here is one of the entries.

The contest was organized by the American Friends Service Committee and The National Priorities Project.

CORPORATE ECONOMIC AGENDA EXPLAINED

Professor James Crotty (Ph.D., Carnegie-Mellon University) is a macro economist with broad interests whose research in theory and policy attempts to integrate the complementary analytical strengths of the Marxian and Keynesian traditions. His writings have appeared in such diverse journals as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Review of Radical Economics, Monthly Review, the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, and the Journal of Economic Issues, and in many edited collections.

His research interests include: economic methodology; the implications of radical uncertainty for macro theory and policy; theories of financial markets and their implications for understanding financial booms and crises; Marxian and Keynesian perspectives on investment theory; the structure and performance of the global neoliberal economy; theories of competition and their impact on theories of macro dynamics; the financialization of the nonfinancial firm; and the political economy of South Korea.

See part two of the interview here