Sunday, April 28, 2013
REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE
[…]
Those in
power often prefer even a critical participation to silence - just to engage us
in a dialogue, to make it sure that our ominous passivity is broken. Against
such an interpassive mode in which we are active all the time to make sure that
nothing will really change, the first truly critical step is to withdraw into
passivity and to refuse to participate. This first step clears the ground for a
true activity, for an act that will effectively change the coordinates of the
constellation.
[…]
USA Student Loan Debt-Slavery
By Alex Pareene
The $1
Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking
on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks
Young people
accepted a home mortgage worth of debt before they ever even had a regular
income based on phony promises.
USA
Today says that at some point this year, student loan debt will exceed
$1 trillion, surpassing even credit card debt. Felix Salmon says the number is
closer to $550
billion. Either way total student loan debt is rising as other debts
have tailed off. Delinquency
has increased, too, since the height of the financial crisis.
It’s a huge mess.
Some people have noticed that “student loan debt” comes up a
lot among the Wall Street Occupiers and the members of the 99 percent movement.
Often, older people, who either attended school when tuition was reasonable, or
who didn’t attend college at all in an era when a high school diploma was
enough of a qualification for a stable, middle-class career, tend to think this
is all the entitled whining of spoiled kids. They don’t understand that these
kids accepted a home mortgage worth of debt before they ever even had a regular
income, based on phony promises, and that the debt is inescapable, regardless
of life circumstances or ability to pay.
Thanks to the horrific 2005 bankruptcy bill, one of the most
nakedly venal modern examples of Congress serving the interests of the rentiers
and creditors over the vast majority, debtors cannot discharge student loans
through bankruptcy. The government is shielded from the risk, and creditors are
licensed to collect by almost any means they deem necessary, giving no one in
charge any real incentive (beyond basic human decency) to fix the situation.
In other words, this is unprecedentedly awful for an entire
generation of young people just
entering adulthood.
“It’s going to create a generation of wage slavery,” says
Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate student in finance who has warned
on a blog for investors that student loans are the next credit bubble — with
borrowers, rather than lenders, as the losers.
Even if by some miracle our unemployed and underemployed
debt-laden graduates all win decent jobs tomorrow, the money they make will go
into paying off these now-delinquent loans instead of anything productive for
the economy as a whole. Banks will continue to see massive profits, in other
words.
The impossibility of escaping student loan debt
is why
an industry sprang up to foist
useless, overpriced degrees on vulnerable people. It’s a scam, but a profitable
one, and respectable enough for major establishment players to feel comfortable
making a killing on it.
Like, for instance, Kaplan University, a
chain of for-profit colleges built on winning
free government student aid money and attracting suckers to borrow small
fortunes.
[…]
Student loans
outstanding will exceed $1 trillion this year
By Dennis
Cauchon, USA TODAY
Updated 10/25/2011
1:23 PM
Students and
workers seeking retraining are borrowing extraordinary amounts of money through
federal loan programs, potentially putting a huge burden on the backs of young
people looking for jobs and trying to start careers.
By Butch
Dill, AP
Full-time
undergrads borrowed an average of 4,963 last year, according to the College
Board.
The amount of
student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first
time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time
this year. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards,
reports the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Department of Education and private
sources.
Students are
borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation,
the College Board reports. Total
outstanding debt has doubled in the past five years — a sharp contrast to
consumers reducing what's owed on home loans and credit cards.
Taxpayers and
other lenders have little risk of losing money on the loans, unlike mortgages
made during the real estate bubble. Congress has given the lenders, the
government included, broad collection powers, far greater than those of
mortgage or credit card lenders. The debt can't be shed in bankruptcy.
The credit
risk falls on young people who will start adult life deeper in debt, a burden
that could place a drag on the economy in the future.
[…]
"It's
going to create a generation of wage slavery," says Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate
student in finance who has warned on a blog for investors that student loans
are the next credit bubble — with borrowers, rather than lenders, as the
losers.
Full-time
undergraduate students borrowed an average $4,963 in 2010, up 63% from a decade
earlier after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports. What's
happening:
•Defaults. The
portion of borrowers in default — more than nine months behind on payments —
rose from 6.7% in 2007 to 8.8% in 2009, according to the most recent federal
data.
•For
profit-schools. The highest default rates are at for-profit schools that
tend to serve lower-income students and offer courses online. The University of Phoenix,
the nation's largest, got 88% of its revenue from federal programs last year,
most of it from student loans.
"Federal
student loans are like no other loans," says Alisa Cunningham, research
chief at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. "The consequences are
so high for making a mistake."
Debt Slavery – Why It Destroyed Rome, Why It Will Destroy Us Unless It’s Stopped
by MICHAEL
HUDSON
[…]
Rome’s
creditor oligarchy wins the Social War, enslaves the population and brings on a
Dark Age
Matters were
more bloody abroad. Aristotle did not mention empire building as part of his
political schema, but foreign conquest always has been a major factor in
imposing debts, and war debts have been the major cause of public debt in
modern times. Antiquity’s harshest debt levy was by Rome, whose creditors
spread out to plague Asia Minor, its most prosperous province. The rule of law
all but disappeared when publican creditor “knights” arrived.
Mithridates
of Pontus led three popular revolts, and local populations in Ephesus and other
cities rose up and killed a reported 80,000 Romans in 88 BC. The Roman army
retaliated, and Sulla imposed war tribute of 20,000 talents in 84 BC. Charges
for back interest multiplied this sum six-fold by 70 BC.
Among Rome’s
leading historians, Livy, Plutarch and Diodorus blamed the fall of the Republic
on creditor intransigence in waging the century-long Social War marked by
political murder from 133 to 29 BC. Populist leaders sought to gain a following
by advocating debt cancellations (e.g., the Catiline conspiracy in 63-62 BC).
They were killed. By the second century AD about a quarter of the population
was reduced to bondage. By the fifth century Rome’s economy collapsed, stripped
of money. Subsistence life reverted to the countryside.
[…]
The Argument Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Wasn’t Allowed to Make at Her Parole Hearing
Posted: 27 Apr 2013 08:18 AM PDT
[Originally
published by The Russian Reader]
Yesterday,
April 26, 2013, a district court in Zubova Polyana, Mordovia, denied imprisoned
Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s request for parole. According
to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Judge Lidiya Yakovleva
agreed with arguments made by prison authorities that it would be “premature”
to release Tolokonnikova given that she “had been cited for prison rules
violations and expressed no remorse,” and had not participated in such prison
activities as the “Miss Charm Prison Camp 14 beauty contest.” Judge Yakovleva
made her ruling without allowing the defense to make a closing argument, thus
allegedly violating the Criminal Procedure Code. Tolokonnikova had written her
statement out in advance. The translation below is of the
Russian original as published in full on the web site of RFE/RL’s
Russian Service (Radio Svoboda). Photos courtesy of the Free Pussy Riot Facebook page.
_____
“Has the
convict started down the road to rehabilitation?” This is the question asked
when a request for parole is reviewed. I would also like us to ask the
following question today: What is this “road to rehabilitation”?
I am
absolutely convinced that the only correct road is one on which a person is
honest with others and with herself. I have stayed on this road and will not
stray from it wherever life takes me. I insisted on this road while I was still
on the outside, and I didn’t retreat from it in the Moscow pretrial detention
facility. Nothing, not even the camps of Mordovia, where the Soviet-era
authorities liked to send political prisoners, can teach me to betray the
principle of honesty.
So I have not
admitted and will not admit the guilt imputed to me by the Khamovniki district
court’s verdict, which was illegal and rendered with an indecent number of
procedural violations. At the moment, I am in the process of appealing this
verdict in the higher courts. By coercing me into admitting guilt for the sake
of parole, the correctional system is pushing me to incriminate myself, and,
therefore, to lie. Is the ability to lie a sign that a person has started down
the road to rehabilitation?
It states in
my sentence that I am a feminist and, therefore, must feel hatred towards
religion.
Yes, after a year and two months in prison, I am still a feminist,
and I am still opposed to the people in charge of the state, but then as now
there is no hatred in me. The dozens of women prisoners with whom I attend the
Orthodox church at Penal Colony No. 14 cannot see this hatred, either.
What else do
I do in the colony? I work: soon after I arrived at Penal Colony No. 14, they
put me behind a sewing machine, and now I am a sewing machine operator. Some
believe that making political-art actions is easy, that it requires no
deliberation or preparation. Based on my years of experience in actionism, I
can say that carrying out an action and thinking through the artistic
end-product is laborious and often exhausting work. So I know how to work and I
love to work. I’m no stranger to the Protestant work ethic. Physically, I don’t
find it hard to be a seamstress. And that is what I am. I do everything
required of me. But, of course, I cannot help thinking about things while I’m
at the sewing machine (including the road to rehabilitation) and, therefore,
asking myself questions. For example: why can convicts not be given a choice as
to the socially useful work they perform while serving their sentences? [Why
can they not chose work] in keeping with their education and interests? Since I
have experience teaching in the philosophy department at Moscow State
University, I would gladly and enthusiastically put together educational
programs and lectures using the books in the library and books sent to me. And
by the way, I would unquestioningly do such work for more than the eight hours
[a day] stipulated by the Russian Federation Labor Code; I would do this work
during all the time left over from scheduled prison activities. Instead, I sew
police pants, which of course is also useful, but in this work I’m obviously
not as productive as I could be were I conducting educational programs.
In Cancer
Ward, Solzhenitsyn describes how a prison camp detective stops one convict from
teaching another convict Latin. Unfortunately, the overall attitude to
education hasn’t changed much since then.
I often
fantasize: what if the correctional system made its priority not the production
of police pants or production quotas, but the education, training, and
rehabilitation of convicts, as required by the Correctional Code? Then, in
order to get parole, you would not have to sew 16 hours a day in the industrial
section of the colony, trying to achieve 150% output, but successfully pass
several exams after broadening your horizons and knowledge of the world, and
getting a general humanities education, which nurtures the ability to
adequately assess contemporary reality. I would very much like to see this
state of affairs in the colony.
Why not
establish courses on contemporary art in the colony?
Would that
work were not a debt, but activity that was spiritual and useful in a poetic
sense.
Would that the organizational constraints and inertia of the old system
were overcome, and values like individuality could be instilled in the
workplace. The prison camp is the face of the country, and if we managed to get
beyond the old conservative and totally unifying categories even in the
prison camp, then throughout Russia we would see the growth of intellectual,
high-tech manufacturing, something we would all like to see in order to break
out of the natural resources trap. Then something like Silicon Valley could be
born in Russia, a haven for risky and talented people. All this would be
possible if the panic experienced in Russia at the state level towards human
experimentation and creativity would give way to an attentive and respectful
attitude towards the individual’s creative and critical potential. Tolerance
towards others and respect for diversity provide an environment conducive to
the development and productive use of the talent inherent in citizens (even if
these citizens are convicts). Repressive conservation and rigidity in the
legal, correctional, and other state systems of the Russian Federation, laws on
registration [of one's residence] and promotion of homosexuality lead to
stagnation and a “brain drain.”
However, I am
convinced that this senseless reaction in which we now forced to live is
temporary. It is mortal, and this mortality is immediate. I am also certain
that all of us—including the prisoners of Bolotnaya Square, my brave comrade in
arms Maria Alyokhina, and Alexei Navalny—have the strength, commitment, and
tenacity to survive this reaction and emerge victorious.
I am truly
grateful to the people I have encountered in my life behind barbed wire. Thanks
to some of them, I will never call my time in prison time lost. During the year
and two months of my imprisonment, I have not had a single conflict, either in
the pretrial detention facility or in prison. Not a single one. In my opinion, this
shows that I am perfectly safe for any society. And also the fact that people
do not buy into state media propaganda and are not willing to hate me just
because a federal channel said that I’m a bad person. Lying does not always
lead to victory.
Recently, I
got a letter containing a parable that has become important to me. What happens
to things different in nature when they are placed in boiling water? Brittle
things, like eggs, become hard. Hard things, like carrots, become soft. Coffee
dissolves and permeates everything. The point of the parable was this: be like
coffee. In prison, I am like that coffee.
I want the
people who have put me and dozens of other political activists behind bars to
understand one simple thing: there are no insurmountable obstacles for a person
whose values consist, first, of her principles and, second, of work and
creativity based on these principles. If you strongly believe in something,
this faith will help you survive and remain a human being anywhere.
I will surely
use my experience in Mordovia in my future work and, although this will not
happen until completion of my sentence, I will implement it in projects that
will be stronger and politically larger in scale than everything that has
happened to me before.
Despite the
fact that imprisonment is a quite daunting experience, as a result of having it
we political prisoners only become stronger, braver, and more tenacious. And so
I ask the last question for today: what, then, is the point of keeping us here?
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
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