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Occupy Wall Street–With “Islamanomics”?!

 

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COMMENT: In past posts, we have not­ed the ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of  Adbusters mag­a­zine, which appers to be the gen­e­sis point of the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment. We have also not­ed edi­tor Kalle Las­n’s Eston­ian back­ground and famil­ial her­itage sug­ges­tive of inclu­sion in the milieu of the ver­triebene groups.

His sug­ges­tion that the world’s poor and dis­en­fran­chised turn to Islam­ic eco­nom­ic and social the­o­ry and prac­tice is price­less, and frankly typ­i­cal of the poor qual­i­ty of the think­ing he man­i­fests.

Sev­er­al points:

  • The grind­ing social and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty and injus­tice that per­vades the Arab and Mus­lim worlds is exceed­ing­ly well doc­u­ment­ed.
  • Las­n’s sug­ges­tion that “Isla­m­o­nom­ics” rep­re­sents some sort of viable alter­na­tive to “The World Bank” demon­strates fun­da­men­tal igno­rance of con­tem­po­rary ide­ol­o­gy. The World Bank is overt­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the cor­po­ratist mod­els upon which the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic the­o­ries are pred­i­cat­ed.
  • In light of Las­n’s Eston­ian back­ground and the fact that his fam­i­ly took refuge in Nazi Ger­many dur­ing the clos­ing days of World War II, we won­der if Las­n’s fond­ness for “Isla­m­o­nom­ics” is root­ed in igno­rance and super­fi­cial­i­ty, or a deep­er fas­cist his­tor­i­cal con­struct.

“Isla­m­o­nom­ics” by Kalle Lasn; Adbusters; 1/25/2010.

EXCERPT. . . . Per­haps, as the dis­par­i­ty between glob­al wealth and des­ti­tu­tion con­tin­ues to grow, peo­ple liv­ing in the impov­er­ished parts of the world will begin to opt out of the West­ern mod­el of eco­nom­ic thought and embrace a ver­sion of Isla­m­o­nom­ics instead. When con­front­ed with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a bru­tal future, the cen­tral idea of all Islam­ic thought, that of a “just soci­ety” built upon com­pas­sion, jus­tice and equi­ty, has pow­er­ful appeal.

If lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism con­tin­ues to fal­ter and favor the rich and if our mar­ket-based eco­nom­ic log­ic can­not be “the ris­ing tide that lifts all boats,” then a mass reeval­u­a­tion of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry may sweep the globe. In an effort to rec­ti­fy pro­found eco­nom­ic imbal­ance and save them­selves, peo­ple may embrace a form of Zakat: the prac­tice where­by all who are able donate a por­tion of their wealth to the poor. They may decide to pro­tect what’s left of the nat­ur­al wealth of their coun­try by des­ig­nat­ing swaths of area Hima: invi­o­late zones that are pro­tect­ed from the reach of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. And they may embrace the notion of Haraam: the idea that all wealth obtained to the detri­ment of oth­ers is for­bid­den.

It would be an epic rethink – a tec­ton­ic par­a­digm shift; a great leap beyond the brand of soul­less neo­clas­si­cal think­ing that defines our eco­nom­ic real­i­ty today. It would inject an ele­ment of human­i­ty into the cal­lous philo­soph­i­cal sys­tems under­ly­ing the World Bank and the WTO and for­ev­er shift the foun­da­tions upon which eco­nom­ic sum­mits and uni­ver­si­ty cur­ricu­lum stand. . . .

Discussion

3 comments for “Occupy Wall Street–With “Islamanomics”?!”

  1. It’s prob­a­bly for the best if this par­tic­u­lar fac­tion of the Occu­py Wall Street lead­er­ship offi­cial­ly sells out like this:

    Pan­do Dai­ly
    Occu­py Wall Street leader now works for Google, wants to crowd­fund a pri­vate mili­tia

    By Yasha Levine
    On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2014

    Remem­ber Jus­tine Tun­ney? The OWS-anar­chist-turned-cultist-Google-employ­ee who bashed my report­ing on Google’s for-prof­it sur­veil­lance? Well, today she hit the big time.

    Over the last few days, Tun­ney has been caus­ing a Twit­ter out­rage tsuna­mi after she took full con­trol of the main Occu­py Wall Street (OWS) Twit­ter account, claimed to be the founder of OWS and then pro­ceed­ed to tweet out stream of ridicu­lous anar­cho-cor­po­ratist garbage. She railed against wel­fare, described the gov­ern­ment as “just anoth­er cor­po­ra­tion,” argued pover­ty was not a polit­i­cal prob­lem but “an engi­neer­ing prob­lem” and told politi­cians to “get out of the way.” She also debunked what she thought was a mis­con­cep­tion: peo­ple thought OWS activists were protest­ing against con­cen­trat­ed cor­po­rate pow­er, and that, she claims, is sim­ply not true.

    As I wrote before, Tunney’s sud­den epiphany that not all cor­po­ra­tions are evil just so hap­pened to coin­cide with her deci­sion to take a well-paid job at Google. Since then she has become an astro­turfer par exel­lence for the com­pa­ny, includ­ing show­ing up in a com­ment sec­tion to bash my report­ing on Google’s vast for-prof­it sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion. “It nev­er ceas­es to amaze me how far peo­ple have to stretch in order to denounce the one cor­po­ra­tion that gives away every­thing for free,” she wrote.

    It’s impor­tant to real­ize that, before tak­ing her job at Google, Tun­ney wasn’t just an Occu­py foot sol­dier, but a promi­nent spokesper­son for the move­ment. She’s been writ­ten about in the New York­er and The Nation as one of the found­ing mem­bers of OWS in Zuc­cot­ti Park, and was instru­men­tal in set­ting up and run­ning OWS’s main Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion hub, OccupyWallSt.org. In media pro­files, Tun­ney described her­self as “just anoth­er geek try­ing to help out with the rev­o­lu­tion,” and you can see her in pho­tographs with oth­er hi-tech rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies occu­py­ing a table in Zuc­cot­ti Park, hunched over lap­tops, wires and com­put­er gear.

    And this week Tunney’s shift away from her for­mer Occu­py pals broke the Twit­ter troll bar­ri­er. Her tweets caused such a social media back­lash that even Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray felt com­pelled to cov­er it:

    Occu­py Wall Street is dead — but its Twit­ter account is alive, and it’s become a fas­ci­nat­ing hotbed of infight­ing between rival fac­tions of the group that once slept out in New York’s Zuc­cot­ti Park.

    Activist Jus­tine Tun­ney, a Google engi­neer, has wrest­ed con­trol of the main @OccupyWallSt Twit­ter account away from oth­er activists and is tak­ing shots at impor­tant fig­ures from the move­ment, includ­ing aca­d­e­m­ic David Grae­ber, con­sid­ered by some to be the intel­lec­tu­al father of Occu­py. Though Tun­ney found­ed the account in 2011, oth­er activists once had access to it.

    The big ques­tion: who found­ed Occu­py?

    But actu­al­ly Tunney’s claim that she found­ed Occu­py is by far the least inter­est­ing part of the sto­ry. Buzzfeed’s Gray missed a much weird­er and sin­is­ter devel­op­ment: Tun­ney — a Google employ­ee — has been push­ing a crazy cru­sade to fund a paid mer­ce­nary pro­test­er army to fight against Wall Street — all via Kick­Starter.

    No joke, grrrrls and bros! Tun­ney wants to crowd­source a pri­vate army rev­o­lu­tion!

    Jus­tine Tunney@JustineTunney

    If we raised $1m to kick­start a non­vi­o­lent mili­tia for #occu­py w/ week­ly train­ings, would you guys be inter­est­ed? @OccupyWallSt@VFPNational
    6:33 AM-25 Sep 2013

    (Pos­si­ble Buz­zfeed head­line for this sto­ry: ten things only Googlers who occu­pied Wall Street and want to crowd­fund a mili­tia will under­stand)

    Tunney’s call to arms was sec­ond­ed by Mic­ah White, for­mer edi­tor of AdBusters who now runs a bou­tique social move­ment con­sult­ing busi­ness. White describes his busi­ness as a “social change con­sult­ing firm found­ed by the Amer­i­can cre­ator of the Occu­py Wall Street meme” which “serves a hand-picked inter­na­tion­al clien­tele of social rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and move­ments.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 9, 2014, 3:33 pm
  2. OWS Founder Calls on Oba­ma to Appoint Google’s Eric Schmidt ‘CEO of Amer­i­ca’

    http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/20/occupy-founder-obama-eric-schmidt-ceo-america

    the founder of Occu­py Wall Street wants the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to resign and appoint her boss, Google’s Chair­man Eric Schmidt, to a new post, CEO of Amer­i­ca

    Posted by Dál Riata | March 21, 2014, 4:18 pm
  3. @Dál Ria­ta: Yeah, you almost have to won­der if Jus­tine Tun­ney’s respon­si­bil­i­ties at Google includes per­son­al­ly test­ing Google’s next gen­er­a­tion inter­face tech­nolo­gies. That might explain the enthu­si­asm.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 21, 2014, 6:12 pm

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