#ReOccupy
Tactical Briefing #8
Hey all you jazz players and re-occupiers out there,
Imagine this: It’s midnight, November 3rd. Every American’s fingernails are gnawed to the quick. Trump holds a razor-thin lead. If the counting stopped here, he’d eke out a win of the popular vote.
If Trump tries to steal the election, what will you do? What role are you prepared to play in this historic showdown?
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Adbusters #151
Siege on the White House
Find out more about the #WhiteHouseSiege in this landmark issue . . . and be a part of history.
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The Pulse Newsfeed
What Does JPMorgan Call Its Crime? "A Little Razzle-Dazzle to Juke the Algos"
The case against JPMorgan Chase for manipulating precious-metals and Treasury markets has many of the usual features. On September 29th it admitted to wrongdoing in relation to the actions of employees who, authorities claim, fraudulently rigged markets tens of thousands of times in 2008–16. The bank agreed to pay $920m to settle various probes by regulators and law enforcement. Some of the traders involved face criminal charges. If convicted, they are likely to spend time in jail.
The traders are alleged to have used “spoofing”, a ruse where a marketmaker seeking to buy or sell an asset, like gold or a bond, places a series of phoney orders on the opposite side of the market in order to confuse other market participants and move the price in his favour. A trader trying to sell gold, for instance, might place a series of buy orders, creating the illusion of demand. This dupes others into pushing prices higher, permitting the trader to sell at an elevated price. Once accomplished, the trader cancels his fake orders.
The practice was explicitly outlawed in America in 2010, but the rise of algorithmic traders — which rapidly analyse order books to work out where prices might move next — has made it more tempting for human traders to spoof them. According to prosecutors one JPMorgan trader described the tactic as “a little razzle-dazzle to juke the algos”.
Eat the Rich
People have been told all their lives that this economy is inevitable and indispensable, and that if they just give it free rein it will ultimately work for them. If they start seeing it for what it is (a con game that enables a tiny number of people to control everyone else in the world through their possession and manipulation of magic pieces of paper), they may conclude that it needs to be replaced, not saved.
— Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets
Featured in issue #151
America at the Edge of Autocracy
In an established autocracy — like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, or Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia — it is nearly impossible to criticize or to investigate the autocrat. In the liminal condition in which we now live, with public institutions threatened but not yet defeated by an elected President, the would-be autocrat must still face the indignities of journalism, legal inquiry, and popular opposition. He must also face an open election. The polls suggest that Joe Biden currently leads the 2020 Presidential race. We suffer no delusions: Trump has on his side demagogic skill and ruthlessness, a willingness to break any norm or law in order to win. Nevertheless, we hope that Biden will displace him by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish. Ideally, Biden will have an opportunity to govern with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, which would vastly increase his chances of passing legislation to confront the nation’s array of crises.
BlackSpot Collective
Today we are 13,000 strong. Tomorrow we will be 100,000. The day after next, we could amass a billion people — enough to spark a world revolution in how we live, love and think.
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Activist wing, Adbusters Media Foundation
ADBUSTERS #151
Find out more about the #WhiteHouseSiege in this landmark issue . . . and be a part of history. It all starts on September 17th.
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Belarus
On Monday, masked men snatched Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova off the streets of Minsk, stuffed her into an unmarked minivan, and drove her to the southern border. After arriving around 4am Tuesday morning, she ripped up her passport; as a result, border guards would not allow her to be sent across into Ukraine. Kolesnikova's kidnapping comes off the back of mass gatherings Sunday, when 100,000 marched through the streets of Minsk to President Lukashenko’s residence. Dressed in the nation's pre–Soviet era colors and waving flowers in the air, protestors have been disputing the legitimacy of last month's election for over four weeks. In place of striking journalists at Belarus' state news network, Putin has sent in personnel from Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT to prop up Lukashenko’s brutal regime. Brussels, London, Washington and Ottawa have made tepid calls for the preservation of democracy. The fate of the country hangs in the balance.
Circulating on social media:
"Footage of an Israeli soldier kneeling, George Floyd–style, on the neck of a Palestenian senior protesting in the West Bank."
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#BLM Street
I sensed then, and this belief would grow as the years went on, that the lifeblood of the movement was not going to be the spokesmen – the schooled, sophisticated, savvy upper crust who might be best at speechmaking and press conferences. They would be the leaders, naturally, but it was going to be the tens of thousands of faceless, nameless, anonymous men, women and children – men like my father, women like my mother, children like the boy I had been – who were going to rise like an irresistible army as this movement for civil rights took shape.
— John Lewis, from his autobiography, Walking with the Wind
David Graeber,
David Graeber, the anarchist intellectual whose early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement, died Wednesday. He was 59.
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#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #3
Trump is trying to steal the election . . . it’s got many of us pretty rattled . . . and things could turn very ugly very quickly as November 3rd approaches. Lawyers are already in court, mounting pre-emptive strikes and preparing for the scorched-earth scenarios likely to come.
Meanwhile white supremacists are waiting in the wings, spoiling for a violent showdown.
#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #2
Time is short. Shall we rely on William Barr to interpret the law justly, in the interest of all Americans? On the police or military to drag Trump from the White House when he loses? On the grace and civility of the alt-right hordes and white supremacists? Of course not.
By now it’s clear that Trump and his sycophants will do anything to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, including crippling the Postal Service. There is no limit to their cynicism, no end to their corruption.
#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #1
It’s been nine years since we set off the political earthquake of #OccupyWallStreet, laying siege to NYC’s Zuccotti Park and inspiring thousands of similar protests around the world.
The Occupy anniversary arrives September 17th, 2020. And it may be the perfect day to trigger another global big-bang moment — a massive collective action of the sweetest kind of disobedience.
You are Stuck.
Dear people of the Adbusters Media Foundation,
We are Afra van den Hoogen, Mila Vuckovic and Nick Verkroost; three first year students of the Audiovisual Media-studies at the University of the Arts in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Last semester we followed a subject about 'culture jamming', for which we created a poster about this subject.
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DONALD
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While earlier forms of money consisted of anything from sea shells to sheep, coins made of gold and silver gradually emerged as the most practical means of exchange and for the storing of value.
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