Browsing PBH By Articles

Giving Direction To Occupy Wall Street

The Article: My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit bankers where it hurts by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.

The Text: I’ve been down to “Occupy Wall Street” twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But… there’s a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it’s hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I’m guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they’d won round one of the messaging war.

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What We Are Angry About

For a great summary on wealth inequality, unemployment, and a range of other metrics showing how just miserable and unjust the American has become, check out this Business Insider post: Here’s What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About.

The Story Of Hamzah Al-Daeni & Righting Wrongs In The War On Terror

Hamzah Al-Daeni was only moments away from celebrating his fifth birthday when he was struck by a U.S. missile in front of his Baghdad home on May 1, 2008. The powerful force that spread from the missile launched Hamzah across the street and into a neighbor’s yard, where he was immediately knocked unconscious. Amidst the frenzied panic unleashed by an American warplane, Hamzah was carried home to his father, Imaad, by a neighbor whose young son Malik died upon impact. Imaad recalled in a solemn voice the terrifying sight of his blood-drenched and dirt-covered five-year-old son, whose exposed intestines dangled aimlessly from his severed abdomen.

Hamzah sustained several injuries throughout his brown-skinned five-year-old body. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors informed Imaad that in order to save his son they needed permission to amputate the unsalvageable appendages that hung like broken branches from Hamzah. Imaad consented on behalf of his son, but the doctors were initially unable to perform the life-saving operation.

Profuse amounts of shrapnel from the blast had severed nearly all of Hamzah’s veins that could have been tapped for an intravenous drip. Imaad and his family felt the hopeless weight of their son’s impending death as the gangrene rapidly crept through Hamzah’s right leg and into his pelvis. But in what could have been his passing moment, Iraqi physicians found a viable vein and were able to perform a massive amputation of Hamzah’s right leg, right testicle, right buttock, two meters of his small intestine, and a portion of his stomach.

I met Hamzah and his father three years later in 2011 at a dinner party hosted by a Palestinian Muslim family in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In the wake of September 11th and the War on Terror, all of our ummah’s gatherings and celebrations had been politically charged. This gathering – where the personal so viciously collided with the political – was no different. The father and son had been brought to the United States by Healing Children of Conflict, a regionally-based NGO that fits third-world amputees with first-world prosthetics. Hamzah and Imaad sat poolside in the Kanaan’s meticulously landscaped backyard, drenched in the humid heat of the early-summer Michigan sun, as local Muslim families and elderly white anti-war activists convened to both celebrate the strength and mourn the pain in Hamzah’s survival.

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Reevaluating Marx At An Unlikely Place

The Article: Was Marx Right? by Umair Haque at the Harvard Business Review blog.

The Text: In case you’ve been on Mars (or even just on vacation), here’s a surprising idea that’s been making the rounds lately: there might have been something to Marx’s critiques of capitalism after all.

Now, before you leap into the intertubes, seize me by the arm, perform a citizens’ arrest, and frog-march me into the nearest FBI office, exclaiming “See this suspicious looking brown guy? He’s a card-carrying communist!!” please note: I’m, well, not. I’m a staunch believer in capitalism (hence, the title of my book.)

Yet, I do think — and after reading the dismal, dreary headlines every day, not to mention checking the value of your 401K, house, job, economy, society, and future lately, I’d bet you do too — that prosperity as we know it might be lazily circling the glowing inner rim of the burbling event horizon of a massive supergalactic black hole. And when it comes to doing much about it (wave hello to your new friend, “double-dip”), well, the status quo’s pretty much out of options, out of ideas, and running out of time (hey, is that a Congressional “super-committee” being stalked by lobbyists I see? Who came up with this brain-melter of an idea?).

Hence, indulge me for a paragraph or two. Now, please note: This is a hugely divisive topic, and by “was Marx right?” I don’t mean “Communism is the glorious future of humankind, my brothers in arms!! (And I am your leader — bow!!)”. For, of course, I think we’ve had plenty of compelling demonstrations that it wasn’t. Rather, I mean: “Was there maybe a tiny mote of insight or two hidden in Marx’s diagnoses of the maladies of industrial age capitalism?”

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Read Tom Oatmeal

Trust me, it’s for your benefit:

“Well I sure hope they got a kick out of watching me sit there for three hours,” I thought angrily. Then I got all huffy puffy like an outraged, white consumer guy. “Well, they just lost themselves a customer!”