A piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement, with a good linkstorm in the middle.
I wouldn't be surprised if people haven't been closely following the Occupy Wall Street movement, in Australia US news is viewed with a little bemusement and equal dose of annoyance.
The 99% movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement is worth following though. We could be on the cusp of major change, and it's people like this who are going to put a match to that fuse.
The enseam'd bed of money and God
The Tea Party movement got a lot of airtime, highly disproportionate to their actual numbers. While many dismissed them as cranks (myself included, more than once), I recognise them clearly now for what they are - the bastard child of evangelist politics and naked corporate greed. The Tea Party's public line was to rail against 'big government', though their ranks were filled with zealots, white supremacists, anti-environment campaigners, and anti-science campaigners, and the make-the-wife-subservient-to-the-husband bible thumper crowd. They represented the distillation of American ignorance that began under Reagan, and reached a laughable nadir under 'King George II'. The media, especially Fox, loved the Tea Party, and why not? They were much more amenable to the pro-rich, anti-rights agenda Fox spruiks on a daily basis. The Republicans, not wishing to be outdone by Tea Partiers in lunacy and corporate advocacy plunged deeper to the right.
Sitting above the Republicans and Tea Partiers, with salacious leers and spit-flecked lips are the predatory, vulture-like Koch Brothers. These are men from a long tradition of preserving wealth at the expense of people like you and me. They're anti-minimum wage, anti-worker's rights, pro-racist. And lately they've been named and shamed for a raft of crimes here.
Still, the outrages committed by the Kochroaches and their gang of rich and selfish clones have real-world effects. For 30 years in the US, the average and minimum wage has barely moved. In the meantime, healthcare has become fully privatised, and the rich have gotten obscenely richer. Real people have real concerns - the middle class is about to be wiped out, people are getting ill and staying ill from maladies that could be quickly and cheaply treated. The subprime mortgage bubble burst that kickstarted the GFC threw a lot of Americans out of their homes. Unemployment is at the highest it's been since the Great Depression.
But, a wall of propaganda is trying to con people that it's Obama's fault. That shrill Republican objectionism and filibustering isn't the real reason the jobs stimulus ended, or the healthcare bill ended up mangled.
You can only fool some of the people, some of the time
1% of the US population owns 50% of its wealth. When even another billionaire like Warren Buffet says the rich should be taxed more, you should suspect something's up. The steady decline in corporate taxation and taxation of the very wealthy is the principle cause in the decline of US government revenue.
When the Wall Street bailout happened, maybe people grudgingly accepted it was necessary to avoid an imminent depression. When those self-same financial institutions gave their most criminally negligent managers exorbitant bonuses, when those self-same institutions continued to pay little or no tax, and fail to repay the booty they'd looted from the public purse, it was inevitable that people would get angry. The bread and circuses of Fox News may con the rubes, but when you can't get healthcare or keep a job or own a home, and some fat banker f#ck just destroyed your way of life, stole money intended for your schools and hospitals, and just got even richer, well... you're going to become a lot more involved, angry and astute like this guy.
Occupy Wall Street, and the mechanism of a lazy state lashes back
Whether it's a group of nurses, setting up shop outside state senator offices across the US, or the 99/98% (depending who you ask) movement that sprang from those early impromptu protests, the people have spoken. The floodgates have been opened to a torrent of frustration of anger. The so-called 'Battle in Seattle' of the earlier anti-WTO protests was an early flashpoint in the struggle, but this is war.
They come in hundreds and thousands, the old, the young. Every day, a trade union comes to join them. Lately 100 grade school kids addressed the crowds and brought their own placards. One home-made sign even suggests the cops are one top-down layoff away from joining them.
The police response has been typical. Cops are a mechanical beast, predictable albeit ruthless in their responses. So they maced the protestors after penning them against a wall. All the protestors with cameras were targeted. The march across the Brooklyn Bridge was permitted and condoned by the NYPD, only so they could trap them on there and perform a mass arrest. The beast is sick, and its antibodies are lashing out blindly.
Even the media won't be on your side. With most news outlets only giving the protest cursory coverage, it has been left to independent news to cover the movement in detail. And why not? Everyone else is going to tell outright lies about them to protect their paymasters. News is not unbiased after all, they have increasingly become a tool to protect the wealthy, and attack the poor. (See the attached image, and then read a couple of the articles below, to realise just how cravenly deceitful the mainstream media are.)
The stories coming out of the occupation of Wall Street are fascinating. I provide a few for your edification;
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/a
http://www.alternet.org/economy/152512/
http://www.alternet.org/newsandvi
http://www.alternet.org/newsandvie
http://www.alternet.
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http://www.alter
http://www.alternet
http://www.altern
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Sorry for that long list, but if you want to truly follow this story, sites like Alternet, Democracy Now, Addicting Info etc are your best bet.
Where to now?
As Greeks rise up in protest against austerity measures, as civil unrest continues to bubble up in France and Spain, as the UK recovers from a season of riots, we should take a leaf out of Iceland's book. Faced with the same problems as other nations affected by the GFC, Iceland had a choice - introduce harsh austerity measures and carry on business as usual, or do something about the real crooks. Their government chose the former, but their people chose the latter. A deposed government later, the financial institutions that caused Iceland's collapse are now labelled criminals.
I would urge the Greeks to do the same, and the Americans, and the French and Spanish. It is not your fault private enterprise got greedy. It is not your fault lax laws or corrupt politicians let them get away with it. They did not get punished. They were allowed to fleece your schools, your hospitals and welfare to patch their leaking monolith. And they won't give it back. In return their cronies on the financial world stage tell your spineless governments to throw your poor out on the streets to starve and die. It's time these Brooks Brothers-suited crooks were held to account. Time for the debts to be written off and the true malefactors made criminally liable for the damage they have wrought. Send the bankers to jail. If your government won't do it, get rid of them and make one that will. Just make sure to keep your conservative pro-God, pro-wealth, Fox News-watching Quislings out of the loop.
I say to the people of these countries wrestling with this catastrophe, victory is within your grasp. YOU are the people, YOU are the ones that the government should serve, not the billionaires, not the banks, not the obscenely wealthy corporations that looted the public purse you all pay into. It is time to end their influence, and remove from office any elected shills that protect them. If you don't they will only become more emboldened, and you can say goodbye to feeding your family, ever owning a home, ever keeping a job, ever affording healthcare. They won't be happy until they've taken everything, and you have no choice left but to accept whatever they offer to be their modern-day serfs.
To those in this struggle, I say it is time for a revolution of the people, by the people, for the people. This is not sedition, this is not treason, this is not criminal. This is returning your society to the people who create it, not the crooks who steal it for their own greedy gain.
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