Category: Class War

Workers movement growing

~ susie

Via Democracy Now!

Labor protests are continuing across the country. In South Carolina, thousands of teachers, religious leaders and state workers gathered at the capitol building on Sunday in opposition to cuts targeted at education, healthcare and other state services. In Austin, Texas more than 10,000 protesters swarmed the grounds of the capitol Saturday to denounce Gov. Rick Perry’s proposal to fire educators, increase class sizes and cut programs. On Friday, protesters in Maine filled the capitol building to take a stand against Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to strip $18 million from the state’s Fund for a Healthy Maine.

Also on Friday, concerned parents and citizens in Maryland’s Prince George’s County gathered at a local school to protest budget cuts that could leave hundreds of low-income, magnet high school students without school buses. Meanwhile, protests in response Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to tax the public and private pensions of senior citizens are scheduled for Tuesday in Lansing.

Rage against the machine

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

In case you were wondering where Anonymous got the speech you hear at the end of the video they just released, it’s the famous one given Dec. 2, 1964 by Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech movement:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.

And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

This is the time, really. Each of us has to look inside our hearts and decide. Are we passive victims of the oligarchy, or are we fighters against the machine? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much faith that electoral politics can solve much of anything now.

I mean, think about this: The Republican governor of Michigan just gave himself the ability to suspend local governments at his whim. What does that tell you?

Where is our country headed? What are we going to do about it? How do we get the power back?

Maybe you’re not ready to be an activist just yet. Probably you still have something left to lose. But we’re getting dangerously close to the point where most of us don’t.

We’ve been living in a dream. Hear that alarm clock? Time to wake up.

Anonymous leaks are here

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

It’s here. The first Anonymous leak from an ex-Bank of America employee has been released, so have at it. (Here’s a Google docs version here.)

Here’s a sample:

How is Balboa able to charge such inflated premiums and get away with it?
It’s all very simple.

First, when you call in to customer service, for say, GMAC, you’re not actually speaking to a GMAC employee. You’re actually speaking to a Bank of America associate working for Balboa Insurance who is required by their business to business contract with GMAC to state that they are, in fact, an employee of GMAC. The reasoning is that if you do not realize you’re speaking to a Bank of America/Balboa Insurance employee, you have no reason to question the validity of the information you are receiving from them. If you call your insurance agent and ask them for the lienholder information for your GMAC/Wells Fargo/etc lien (home or auto) you will be provided with their name, but the mailing address will be a PO Box at one of Balboa’s 3 main tracking locations (Moon Township/Coreaopolis, PA, Dallas/Ft Worth, TX, or Phoenix/Chandler, AZ)