An Open Letter to the Occupy Movement

Hi guys,

Let me just start by saying thank you for your devotion to the human side of community and the right of being a citizen of the constitution! It’s awesome, don’t ever stop!! I wanted to respond to your invitation to offer suggestions about the idea of indoor space for meeting and such. I think it’s a great direction and can really give the movement the legs needed to carry it into the future.

When I consider the idea of Occupy in the future, the one thing I feel needs to be a preamble of growth and sustainability is the same key that makes a GA meeting and the anarchist framework the right choice for organizing a group. Obviously it has grown using this tool (GA) and organization from 60 to millions. The tool is listening! In a circle we listen to each other, and this is important. We don’t make decisions without hearing everyone. We need to do the same thing with the future, by listening to the moment and the community we are surrounded by in order to win the next battle, which is the loyalties of the community of Portland and the Greater Multnomah County. Because, whether they know it or not, they are part of our struggle and will make Occupy, as a movement, even stronger when all the 99% are accounted for.

I believe that Occupy like any organization needs to be self-supporting through their own contributions. This approach has worked for AA and can work just as well for GA. I believe it can be just as empowering for Occupy to do fund raising, and canvassing for basic needs to strengthen the logistical base and share vital information with community about what we’re doing and who we are. It has worked well for the Sierra Club and other organizations that wish to gain community support and funding for wildlife protection projects and legal representation to stop developments that can endanger our back yard. Places that this can be done can double as a way to inform bank customers about their choice of banking. If we canvas banks and talk to their customers, we can be changing things in more way than one!

Having a central Camp in town, just to show that “we are here” has been played out. I believe that we need to keep a presence, but sitting in town isn’t going to win the PR side of the battle and what Occupy needs to make real change is everyone else of the 99%! The Apache successfully challenged the mighty Spanish Armies in the America’s for 200 years with small groups, who remained autonomous to act independently. Leadership was an action and not a person! Occupy could, through canvassing neighborhoods and facilitating smaller neighborhood groups, create a dialog in every neighborhood made up of the people who live in that neighborhood. Actions for smaller groups can focus on self-sustaining measures like “Front Yard CSA’s” or energy projects that help change these (our) neighborhoods permanently. Find a space, like AA does, canvas the neighborhood, and facilitate General Assemblies and allow them to shape it autonomously, to fit the needs of the community! In time we will have won the PR side and the numbers may soon constitute bigger campaigns, like mortgage strikes, general corporate strikes, or consumer strikes.

I know that these measures alone cannot bring down the entire system without a presence, or people will forget what has become so important to so many people. I have friends with families and businesses that support what we are doing, but would never consider taking their children to large marches and risk their families. This does not mean that they are not behind it. In fact one of my friends contacted me in tears because she was worried it might end before any real changes could happen and she is counting on us! A public presence is the biggest, most impactful, action the occupy movement has used to gain its still growing support from. It should continue, and utilize the entire movement’s energy to bring the noise! That’s why I believe it should be considered that a “central” GA take place a few times a week in a very public way. It doesn’t need to stop the lives of the working-class, but it should be a gathering of everyone in the county!

Lastly, I would like to believe that Occupy is helping to bring choices to our government, that allows it to listen to the people, but I fail to see how the system won’t just return back to it’s natural state of impossible. Calling for a Constitutional Convention that gives the the people a say to the details could happen, but what I see is tactics looking to end the movement, and getting them to agree to terms will only give them the same luxury the Senate is reflecting with budget passing and Tea Bagger antics. Politicians can be bought and General Assemblies can’t. I believe that we are the Change! And, if we act like the future of America and the Global Village we are part of, we will never go away and everyone will be free because of it!!!

Peace!
Michael Light
solight111@klickdse.com

Occupy Earth United for Global Change – Oct. 15th. 2011

On October 15th the entire World will stand in the place they live and Unite the World in a movement that began as Occupy Wall Street, sponsored by the Canadian magazine Adbusters. It is being called United for Global Change. #Occupywallstreet as it is referred to on Twitter, began as a grass roots move to call attention to the extreme imbalances that have been growing in the World’s Economic system. It has all but been completely ignored by the mainstream media and when the news is covered it has been laced with shades of PR “talking points” reflecting several different interests.

It would appear from the slants being conveyed in the media that Democrats believe they can Co’op the movement and turn it into possible legislature to help push plans through Congress that will give them more clout to tax the rich to pay for job bills. While the right wing has called the event in Wall Street a “Class War” and “Dangerous”, and Glenn Beck has gone so far as to suggest that these protestors have intentions to drag people out into the streets and “kill” them. It just amazes me that so much slander around a movement that has the sole intention to call for a more “Participatory Democracy”, according to organizers in Boston.

Several failings in the attempts to discredit the movement have begun to shift people over to new sources of information for the news surrounding the events taking place, now in every major city in the US and on Oct. 15th in every major city around the World. No news has come out of China as to whether they will attempt to join Western forces in their move toward Solidarity against what is being referred to as the “Corporate Banking Political Media Group”. I’ve always just called it Capitalism, which seems to be up against the same possible fate that fell upon Communism in the 90′s. Central leadership always seems to fall victim to monetary control and looses sight of it’s main constituency, which is people!

Some news people have spoken out against the mainstream media’s blatant disregard and close to slander of the events, especially Keith Olbermann who has become a huge proponent of Twitter as the one place that anyone can find almost all the news being reported. The entire event and every local event is being organized on Facebook with page named after each event, OccupyLondon for instance is the “occupy” event taking place to protest the London Stock Exchange. Events can be search using either Facebook or Twitter and specific news being posted is listed according to each event. For the London Exchange it would post with the hashmarked version of the Facebook page, #occupyLondon. It is also possible to follow each groups Twitter account @occupyLSX, and so forth.

It amazes me still to see how long the media is holding out on acknowledging this isn’t a bunch of pot smoking hippies, but as has happened in NY and now in Boston, it is being helped by the Labor Unions and people of every age group and occupation! The divided has become so critical in this writers mind that it will be difficult if not impossible for them to ever regain the public trust enough to ever be considered a valid or credible news source.  So, rather than expecting to hear about the events in your area, cause there will probably be little to none, get a Twitter account or look up your specific area on Facebook to get all the news relevant to your location! And don’t believe the mainstream media when they quote the now famous “talking point” that this is an unorganized group of kids without a clear message. The message is quite clear! Occupy – United for Global Change has organized an entire World Event on Oct. 15th 2011 to show solidarity for Economic Justice, and they have done it using Social Media!

Facebook/OccupyEarthUnited

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Socialmedia Influence – Currency of the Future is now available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.de

25% of royalties go to support the Occupywallstreet Movement.

Michael Light started Endoflex in 2006 to report the beginnings of the Subprime Mortgage Industry Fallout and has continued with the recent Occupy – United for Global Change.

Occupy Wall Street has changed the way we see the media, and it’s relationship to the powerful influencers of the World, and may even be the spark that ignites the shift from monetary policy influence to Socialmedia Influence. Michael Light reveals this shift in his book with a succinctly humorous history of influence and the shifts that have preceded what may be the next Global paradigm shift.

Join the conversation on Facebook

The Second Law of Hyper-Inflation

It’s been a couple of years now since the original ripple of the Subprime Market Shift. I am choosing to call it a shift because ever since it occurred we have been steadily moving toward the point of no return. Simply put, the Fed response to the economy over the last 2 years has had a profound effect on the progress and seriousness of what’s happening in the World’s Economy.

The most recent event in the saga has been the slow response to raise interest rates amid a rush of market activity. On paper it looks great, “Highly residual market roars back with a flood of investor cash.” sounds good right? Well without getting into a math quiz prep, lets just look at the basics. In the last 2 years the stock market has gained back 60-65% of it’s pre-subprime shift, while unemployment has very quickly gotten worse, but slowing. Consumer spending is erratic, which means impulsive and not a trend, but rather a whim.

The main problem isn’t any one of these, and there are more I haven’t mentioned. The real problem is that prices over the last 4 years have skyrocketed in many areas of the economy, while some of these are seeing deflation. Much of this inflation has to do directly with the prices of energy. It has effected everything from shipping to food cost, which are the two biggest burdens on an economy. The US Economy was built on cheap food and cheap fuel. It has a hard time thinking outside of that box, and has been excluded as a model type for inflationary scaling. Normally it fluctuates with supplies, but supplies are limited now and the pressure of demand is not letting up, but excelling.

During the peak of the credit crunch part of the shift many people failed to notice that supplies of rice had dried up. During that time China stopped exporting rice and actually imported it for the first time in history. India, the second largest supplier of rice to the world’s markets as well stopped exporting rice. The Philippines could not get 75,000,000 tons from any one country, while a wheat rust began spreading across Africa and the Middle East. All this will put real pressure on the populational scope of possibilities. How many is too many? In any case both energy and food are real factors and can no longer be looked at as separate from core inflation. It must now be balanced.

These factors are mixing to provide an unstable rate of inflation. The argument against this might be that the economy had suffered infrastructural damage and without TARP and keeping interest low The economy could stall and loose any momentum it has gained by our interventions. Frankly I think loosing all of the exisiting banks that jumped on the derivatives bandwagon would not have been such a huge loss. Loosing GM, who is still pushing big trucks and probably helping with the anti-Toyota campaign can go into the dung heap if you ask me. It would be nice to live in a place where oil company and auto maker bedfellow’s didn’t orchestrate our environment economically.

But what to do about Ben. Obama, after having hindsight to call on, stuck with Ben. Congress approved Ben, and if you ask me; I see Ben as part of the problem at it’s crux. You can’t blame Congress for wanting more American’s to own their own homes, regardless of what Fox News might say, and you can’t blame Alen Greenspan for ignoring what shouldn’t have been such a big problem had the SEC asked for clear disclosure from the banks and investment houses on their inventory of subprime investments. In your mind you think of these derivatives as somewhat safe considering the houses were real, that the securities were representing real value. The problem was they were popular raising the value way above the physical value of the homes. So when it fell it fell hard, and that could have been resolved right away when Ben became aware of the collision about to take place… Oh wait!

That’s right! Ben didn’t do anything! He said the subprime fallout would stay in the subprime market. That was way off by the way. Then we fail to recognize the main stress which would prevent this from being an easy recovery… the price of oil and natural gas, which had been going up steadily since the invasion of Iraq. It was causing UPS and Airlines companies to add service or fuel charges to their services. It was effecting food costs, creating shortages, raising values accross the board. Heating cost one winter effect consumer spending directly, but the demand for these things are primary, while supply on the other hand wasn’t to be cured by invading Iraq. It won’t be solved by drilling in Alaska. The only thing that will solve it is greater efficiency. New technology and conservation.

Yes Ben, we have suffered a major systemic threat, but it isn’t the conditions that fail. It is the system which has so many flaws. All we managed to do was put the dying patient on life support for a little while. The conditions themselves were not met with clearly and desisively. They were resolved temporarily in order for the direction of our economic base to keep perpetuating. The problem is that it won’t last and Ben’s gonna provide us with the keys. Failing to raise interest rate in order to keep moving forward is exactly the wrong thing to do. Your might be thinking that he raised them a quarter point, but that was after the momentum in the market was accelerated to the degree is pressing with now. If he would have raised it for the second time it might have slowed down the pace, but he didn’t.

So here is my prediction from this flotsam of ramblings. Ben’s response have been steadily late. He didn’t take inventory when it started and could have done more earlier without pumping 4 trillion dollars into the banks, who should have failed due to poor risk assessment and management. He could have primed Congress to reign in the banks before the splash and had them increase their cash positions earlier. They could have forced the SEC to ask them for full disclosure and written off the debts, assembling them back into real estates, and not paper. None of these things happened. It is likely we will stay the course and what was the direction wasn’t really working all that well. It is likely to repeat itself.

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Ben’s not the problem, but is he the “Man to Solve It”?

Now wait one second, Mr. Ron Paul. I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that Ben Bernanke caused the recession. That would be like saying that he personally engineered the subprime mortgage security, these… as Greenspan called them, creative Financial Products. As well it would be like suggesting that he, and not Greenspan, first became aware of these derivatives and how if left unchecked, like most objects the bubbles surround, could have a greater fallout on the bigger economy. Unfair if you ask me, but a saint in this affair he is neither.

Ben, Your crime is negligence my friend. You had a chance to study the possible effect of the subprime fallout in its making. You knew by the figures that it had reached the title of bubble based on the intel you collect on the economy daily. Crunching the numbers would have told you that the value of these products were highly inflated. He also knew that the subprime lendees were starting to default at a rate exceeding what the current (at that time) secondary housing market could absorb (2 million that year alone). And you ignored the fallout.

The housing industry supports so many other industries and about 30% of the blue collar work force, how could you be so naive that you would forget about small appliances and turf farms, or the trillions of dollars worth of collapsible wealth there was hidden in two highly regulated markets; the banks and real estate.

The one thing no one wants to admit is the part that 140 a barrel oil played into that scenario. How it was the real pull that was slowing the economy. It was just bad timing that the subprime fallout occurred simultaneously. Timing was the real culprit of this decades recession, if you ask me.

But… Ben, you could have made a real difference when it started in Dec. 2006. This would have been a great time to look at the senarios the fallout could have, mixed with the fuel pressure. Greenspan warned us that natural gas would peak in the US and that without building new infrastructure to trasfer the reigns to importers, that the preasure it would put on the economy could be catastrophic beyond repair, which coupled with the war in Iraq and the inflation which follows war, it would have taken a real genius to worm us out of that without a flu shot!

Act 2, Scene 2011 – INFLATION

So, here’s the dealio folks. We know that although Greenspan was a economic muse it didn’t save him from ignoring the truth sometimes. Struggle as we do, it’s life! Ben on the other hand has not been at all the successor we were expecting. I think we were into the whole moderating side of Keyenian economics. Sure it won’t last forever, but it does tend to keep inflation and unemployment in check, for the most part. And, here’s where it gets a little tricky, and I see Ben looking ahead a little bit, but… how do you tame a super-hyper inflation.

We just poured approximatly 4 Trillion dollars into the US economy, Europe is already beginning to see an uptick in there inflation from the money they poured into there central banks. The problem is that when these banks start loaning out this money it is going to multiply, as they loan it. This mixed with inflation in every other country that followed this lead will have a global effect of manic deflation.

Seriously we should have let the fallout happen and build a health economic plan that was based on total value, including energy and global costs of repair. It’s not really a choice if we understand what we are facing.

Last Night on TV

So, last night I’m watching the La Lakers take the first game of the Western Conference Finals (online of course) and I get to watch all the commercials on ESPN. Some of you might think that’s a bit odd, but I don’t have access to commercial television; no cable or satellite dish, just my internet connection.

All through the game I saw a lot of different advertising and this one I couldn’t believe. First of all Toyota is advertising their prius and it’s Green Appeal, and then I see this Cadillac Escalade commercial and it hits me that this whole GM bailout is going to fail, sure as shit. How is this any different?

Toyota and Honda are both selling cars that people need in order to meet with the changes coming, frankly gasoline cannot last for ever and these things can get 50 mpg. What does an Escalade get for mileage. I don’t even care. Like I said I don’t even own cable..

It amazes me we even bothered bailing anything out at all, the banks the insurers and the automakers can fold and I don’t think I would miss them at all. It seems to me that they got themselves into this mess, right!?

But, promising the American Government that it would change directions and then going on like “business as usual”, minus the layoffs, factory closures, and dealer closings. Don’t worry we’ll help you stretch out that failure, while we let our factory workers and and sales people find something else to do.

Personally I believe that all that bailout money would have been far more wisely spent on education, because the people running these companies obviously missed out on economics 101…

Is that Tamiflu in your pocket…?

OMG!! We’re all gonna DIE! Again… It really amazes me how ridicules the Nation’s Media is. Look, I like Drama just as much as the next guy, but Pandemic? The Spanish Influenza kill 50 million people in 30 days. Loosing 200 in a week is not on the same scale. First of all only about 50-75 people in the US have contracted this thing, and according to “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (they) estimate that approximately 1.1 million persons are living with HIV in the United States.”(1)

The funny part about living with the US’ Media is that they are all on the same script. I wonder if viewers could start a group law suit for starting a panic over total misinformation. When Howard Dean was tore apart by the Media after misinterpreting what I would consider to be a pep rally to raise the morale of the thousands of volunteers that were there to support his Campaign. For weeks we had to see this one stupid picture that fraudulently depicted his actions, while the “commentator news core” ripped on him and told us all about his poor behavior, unbecoming of a president.

Now, everyone may not agree with me, but I think he was the only president running at the time who had any real plan, including a balanced budget, health care for America, and alternative energy. We could have really used him in 2004, but that’s not what happened. Instead we got a Republican agenda which was running rampant against all the things most American’s believe in, like Torture and Financial System Bailouts, and 4 dollar a gallon gasoline.

Personally I feel that any format that presents itself as a news program must leave commentary to the commentary segments and should be held accountable for the facts they present as news to America. I wish Howard Dean would have sued AP News and any parrot news agency who repeated the lie. It’s bullshit and we all know the Media is a PR scandel in American life. If you don’t believe me check out your sources and the fact surrounding them and see what’s what. Don’t take my word for it, do a little research on your information.

1). Taken from the CDC website.

Cause and Effect: The Evolution of our Environment

I couldn’t tell you which brilliant philosopher said we we’re the result of our environment, but the more I look at the current Global and National environment, the more I feel our culture and the World’s cultures are being shaped by the events our environment are currently offering us. In the past events have helped, if not controlled, the shifts in our perception that allow change to occur.

In the early 30′s in America, we saw (historically speaking) a huge shift in the mainstream perceptions toward the purpose and our common agreement as citizens within our society. People had lost confidence in the markets and the banking institutions. This new sentiment led to the creation of the New Deal and a lean toward a more socialistic form of capitalism. Money being spent to shore up the welfare of the community and a sharing of the wealth in the area of technology and labor became the chant of the day.

There is so much more to say on this, but what’s the point… who cares! I’m just ready for something else!

Today we are seeing some of the same obstacles we saw during the prequel to the Great Stock Market Crash of 29. We see banks tightening, unwilling to lend to each other, let alone consumers. The markets are filled with giant waifs of exuberance and the biggest investors, while cheering us to invest in the future (albeit cautiously) are themselves pulling their money out of the markets in order to avoid the hefty fluctuation of volatility being exhibited. In September 210 billion dollars was pulled out of Hedge Funds, which collapsed the prices in everything from tech stocks to oil.

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury of the US have been hard at work trying to give investor something to trust by dropping trillions of dollar into the markets, mostly banking. This is an attempt to restore consumer and investor confidence. So, what if it fails as it did in the 30′s. The S&P 500 which in 1929 was at around $340.00 continued to fluctuate for another 3 years, rising with the morning news and crashing by the evening edition finally landing at $44. This I don’t find surprising whatsoever.

Many have called this Crisis a “Credit Crisis” and recently I had heard the use “Confidence Crisis”, but really what it amounts to is a “Truth Crisis”. The fact is that it is a Debt Issue we are talking about, as well as a Growth Issue. Growth is necessary for a couple of reasons, in order to keep up with things like: Interest, out dating of technology, repair, natural losses caused by acts of God, and my favorite… Acclimation. We as human beings get bored with the mundane. We constantly need something new and sometimes we can’t seem to find it anymore, no matter how many times we try to revive all the old styles. So, what’s missing…

What is it that leads us to create drama in our lives in order to see beyond it. My guess is that it’s all of these things, but mostly I believe it is truth. Consciousness will never be truly content with the satiation of lies as long as it keep us from the greater pleasure of collective happiness. This can only come through direct experience. If you don’t believe me visit an addiction group meeting and within a few minutes you’ll hear that the main theme of sobriety is real life experience, directly had.

Nothing short of death can really succeed to distract us from who we really are for very long, and if you look at some of the realities of our society it is easy to see that it isn’t distracting us the way it did when the technology was fairly new. I mean think about it. When was the last time you remember the family coming together in the den to listen to the Presidents Fireside Chats, or a Sci Fi Fiction for that matter. Face it, we’re bored!

So, why try to save the banks. No really, who cares if the monetary system collapses. Something new will yield from the ashes of the past. It is inevitable. What about life being the incentive for happiness, what about exploration and creative achievement, instead of watching TV or being a file clerk just to pay off the philosophy degree debt. To me it seems like we have sort of lost something between paychecks. What is it? Does anyone know where this is headed?

Monkey Security and the F-word (Freedom)

It amazes me how everything political has become an issue of “Security”, even global climate changes that may be the result of global warming or may just be industrialization, or both. It really doesn’t matter what the cause is to Washington, but does this effect our Security? It was never about the conditions we create that may or may not effect life on this planet, but rather how we, as a Nation, protect our dominant positions on the socio-political and economic structure, chess board.

When I was a kid we used to play something like that called Risk, but we never really took it that seriously. Well, this morning I was doing some light reading and came across this section of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act* (see below) and was less than surprised that they had turned the Green Movement to Stop Global Warming into another version of the security game. You know, the one that was magnified into a monster the size of a low budget Tokyo film after Bush and friends, I mean the terrorists, started their war.

Lets just stop for a minute and try to understand this (stream of thought). According to the Websters Dictionary** (see below) – Security means to be free from anxiety or fear. The irony here is that you must first be subjected to an idea in order to be freed from it. In other words you can’t really be freed from prison without first going. “So what does this have to do with the environment?”, you ask. Well, that’s the point isn’t it. It really doesn’t have to do with the environment at all, and that’s my point.

“INTERAGENCY CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL” He muses thoughtfully, and I wonder when Webster decided to make security and freedom equinimitous.
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*SEC. 4801. INTERAGENCY CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL.

(a) Establishment- There is established a Climate Change and National Security Council (referred to in this subtitle as the `Council’).

(b) Membership- The Council shall include–

(1) the Secretary of State, who shall serve as Chairperson of the Council;

(2) the Administrator;

(3) the Secretary of Defense; and

(4) the Director of National Intelligence.

(c) Duties- The Council shall–

(1) submit annual reports to the President, the Committees on Environment and Public Works and Foreign Relations of the Senate, and the Committees on Energy and Commerce and Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives that describe–

(A) the extent to which other countries are committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through mandatory programs;

(B) the extent to which global climate change, through the potential negative impacts of climate change on sensitive populations and natural resources in different regions of the world, may threaten, cause, or exacerbate political instability or international conflict in those regions; and

(C) the ramifications of any potentially destabilizing impacts climate change may have on the national security of the United States, including–

(i) the creation of refugees; and

(ii) international or intranational conflicts over water, food, land, or other resources; and

(2) include in each annual report submitted under paragraph (1) recommendations on whether it is necessary to enhance the national security of the United States by funding programs with amounts made available under section 4802 that the Council determines would assist in avoiding the politically destabilizing impacts of climate change in volatile regions of the world.

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**Security 1: the quality or state of being secure: as a: freedom from danger : safety b: freedom from fear or anxiety c: freedom from the prospect of being laid off