John Dolva Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 Declaration of the Occupation of New York City Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011 Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. * To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard! *These grievances are not all-inclusive. Update 10/1/11 – Minor updates to some wording in the facts. This entry was posted in News, Official General Assembly news, September 17th and tagged Declaration by NYCGA. Bookmark the permalink. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 On your knees John !! Limbaugh has spoken !! link http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201110030025 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 6, 2011 Author Share Posted October 6, 2011 Well, what does one expect from someone such as he... .......... http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48968 Wall St Occupation: 'All wronged by corporate forces are our allies' Thursday, October 6, 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest, October 5. Photo by Mike Lewis/Flickr. The declaration published below (above, post one) was unanimously passed by all members of Occupy Wall Street on September 29. It is the first official document for release. Receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com . #OccupyWallStreet is a people-powered movement for democracy that began on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. It has faced severe police repression. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, it has since spread to a number of other US cities. The movement is increasingly linking up with unions. You can see more photos here. For more information, visit www.occupywallstreet.org . Occupy Wall Street Media by Jed Brandt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Parker Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 I predicted this in 2004 - though I got the timing wrong - I said then it would happen four years... so three years out... Over the next four years I think we'll see a return to 60s style riots in the streets of blue states as the war on "terror" lurches its way from one trouble spot to another, the wealth gap becomes a canyon, business and government continue to find ways to dissemble on the environmental impact they have, and as freedoms and rights continue to be incrementally "disappeared". http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2126&st=45 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 (edited) I predicted this in 2004 - though I got the timing wrong - I said then it would happen four years... so three years out... Over the next four years I think we'll see a return to 60s style riots in the streets of blue states as the war on "terror" lurches its way from one trouble spot to another, the wealth gap becomes a canyon, business and government continue to find ways to dissemble on the environmental impact they have, and as freedoms and rights continue to be incrementally "disappeared". http://educationforu...opic=2126&st=45 That's pretty good Greg, as I've been studying how these protests begin, what sparks them and how soon they come to the attention of the government and media. Like the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street protests are based first on the economy, and second on the perversions of the system - including the monetary system and the two party system that has allowed the economic situations to develop. It has the same roots as the Arab Spring revolutions, as Mohammid Bouazizi sparked the Arab revolutions in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia when set himself on fire after he was arrested for selling fruit out of a cart on the street when he couldn't get a job. Of course, it is always the over-reaction of the security forces who racket it up a few notches, as Bouazizi was abused and insulted by a female police officer who was later arrested after the success of the revolt but not indicted. She had also confiscated his cart, but the incident was compounded when Bouazizi tried to get a license to sell his fruit on the street out of cart but was given the bureaucratic runaround, which resulted in him setting himself on fire in front of the police and administration building. It wasn't until a few days to a week before BBC reported on the protests and probably another week before the mainstream media and other governments realized something was going on that they better pay attention to. Before he died, Bouaziz learned that others had taken up his cause and protested, first peacefully, and then in violent classes with police and when more police and military were called out, the protests spread to other towns and cities, after which the dictator, who had been entertaining the French foreign minister on her Christmas holiday, tried to quell the protests by sending millions of dollars in aid to the town of Sidi Bouzid, but it was too late. A day before he died, the dictator had visited Bouazizi in the hospital to meet the man who would force him from power a few days later - the first victim of Arab Spring. From there the Sidi Bouzid Revolution - as the Tunisians call it, spread to Egypt where young, educated and mostly unemployed young people organized protests of their own. As was the case in Tunisia, the original goal of the protests was for more jobs, an open economy, an end to cronyism and a call for democratic reforms, but after the police state repressions, Mubarak had to go, and did. The revolution in Syria began after the police arrested a group of children - ten year olds who were caught spraying anti-government graffiti on walls, and picked up considerably when they were tortured and they may have been killed. In any case, the Syrians too only wanted reforms in the system until their protests were violently repressed, and only then did the regime change become a requirement. Omar, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and especially Saudi Arabia have already instituted reforms that they hope will placate such revolutions in their countries. The Saudi monarchy has said women will have the right to vote in the next election and that prohibitions against women driving will not be strictly enforced. Libya was not in the same economic category, as its relatively meager 6 million people lived pretty good, and hired many foreign contractors to do most of the work they didn't want to do. But despite the comparatively good economy, one fifth of the people worked for the government, which was Gadhafi's police state. Bahrain's revolution was brutally repressed with imported troops from Saudi Arabia, where the Tunisian dictator sought asylum and the Yemen dictator sought medical assistance after a failed assassination attempt. So far only in Yemen have the originally peaceful protesters resorted to violence, though some military in Syria have defected and are fighting to protect themselves. Algeria and Morocco in North Africa have had protests but have basically foiled the early demonstrations by spreading a lot of money around, cutting off the origin of the unrest. As Meyer Lansky once said, money is like manure, the more you spread it around the better it works for you, something the dictators learned the hard way. Major protests by millions of mainly young people were also held in Israel and Spain (and Greece), and the issues there were the same - jobs and the economy, but they were not reported in the mainstream media in the USA. Of course the youth of America watched the revolutions spread like wildfire and had to get in on the fun and action, and hence the Occupy Wall Street movement got started using the same social networking forces that were used to spread the Tunisian revolt throughout the Arab region. Another similarity is the lack of leadership. Previously the dictators dealt with such unrest by infiltrating and arresting the leadership, and after cutting off the head it usually fell apart, but in these cases the arrest of the social networkers or the shutting down of the networks merely brought new people into the fight and new means of communication were developed. Then they flipped the coin on the dictators by making regime change the goal, something that was not their original intention, mainly because they didn't think it was possible. Early success in Tunisia and Egypt showed it was possible, but Gadhafi and the tyrants of Bahrain, Syria and other countries became determined to make the primarily peaceful protests into a violent revolution and civil war. Besides the youthful economic origins of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and their starting with small numbers of people - dozens - that grow to hundreds after an original crackdown by police, and then thousands, another similarity should be the refining of their goals - though it is unlikely that the President will be a victim or a beneficiary of the protests unless he does something to harness their movement. The Occupy Wall Streeters didn''t get much publicity or support until after some NYPD maced a couple of girls, a scene plastered on Youtube, which radically increased their fan base and support, and a group of peaceful demonstrators who had set up a lemonade stand on the DC Mall were pretty much ignored too until the cops gave them a ticket for selling lemonade without a license and arrested them. (sound familiar). But the first violence occurred when a female police officer tried to stop a cameraman from filming the arrest, another Youtube event. Unlike the Buddhist Monks who set themselves on fire in Vietnam in the Sixties, I don't think there is a video or YouTube of Mohamid Bouazizi's self-immolation. In any case, the common attributes of all these protests are their economic origins, their lack of leadership, their social networking organization, their lack of original goals that are only later defined, and their popular support coming from their early violent repression by the police state. I thought it pretty significant that nobody saw this regional Arab revolt coming, and am anticipating how it will spread to places where there is already established democracies, like Spain, Israel, Greece and the USA. Then there's the: Supercomputerpredicts revolution http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-14841018 Sentiment mining showed asharp change in tone around Egyptahead of President Mubarak's ousting. Feeding a supercomputer withnews stories could help predict major world events, according to US research. A study, based on millions of articles, charted deteriorating national sentiment ahead of the recent revolutions in Libya and Egypt. As someone who tried to bring regime change about in 1968 through the democratic process in supporting Eugene McCarthy for President to end the Vietnam War, I know what it is like to be on the wrong end of a failed revolution, as I was dragged from my hotel room into the streets of Chicago where the police and National Guard teargased and clubbed anybody they came into contact with. That's what radicalized me, thought I never thought I'd see such revolutions succeed, as the Arab revolutionaries seem to be determined. The Americans can be more easily pampered, and I think will be less successful, though I hope I am wrong. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK BK Revolutionary Program Edited October 8, 2011 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 8, 2011 Author Share Posted October 8, 2011 That's a great post imo, BK. The last two lines in particular. JFK was great with brief truisms. I think the first of the last two is perhaps slightly obscure. In seems to bespeak a deep knowledge hampered by something. It doesn't directly in itself address the matter of the whole spectrum of dynamics involved. Mother Theresa called the US the poorest country in the world. Being poor means not having enough and in the end it is those who really don't have enough that pay. The US is the wealthiest country in the world. They have room to move. It won't be the end of the system that creates these situations. The road to there is long. This will educate many, and hopefully that will benefit any future actions. I think the international component (of the declaration) is significant. Ultimately it will be a matter of on which side the Presidency (not the President person, tho Hugo Black had something to say about that) lands. This playing off with both sides is precicely what enabled the german National Socialist Workers Party at a time when Germany was in a serious economic melt down to defeat the only major opponent, the German Communist Party by appealing to fundamentally lumpem type mindsets hand in hand with the bankers. That's fascism. That will ultimately be the struggle that will be fought (again). This is an educative process and while it is still available perhaps that which will spread new ideas is the net just like the Merchant Marine used to in the early days. Remember there was a brutal repression and a first world war between the 1905 revolution in Russia and the 1917 one. The Great Strike in Britain was still 10 years in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 That's a great post imo, BK. The last two lines in particular. JFK was great with brief truisms. I think the first of the last two is perhaps slightly obscure. In seems to bespeak a deep knowledge hampered by something. It doesn't directly in itself address the matter of the whole spectrum of dynamics involved. Mother Theresa called the US the poorest country in the world. Being poor means not having enough and in the end it is those who really don't have enough that pay. The US is the wealthiest country in the world. They have room to move. It won't be the end of the system that creates these situations. The road to there is long. This will educate many, and hopefully that will benefit any future actions. I think the international component (of the declaration) is significant. Ultimately it will be a matter of on which side the Presidency (not the President person, tho Hugo Black had something to say about that) lands. This playing off with both sides is precicely what enabled the german National Socialist Workers Party at a time when Germany was in a serious economic melt down to defeat the only major opponent, the German Communist Party by appealing to fundamentally lumpem type mindsets hand in hand with the bankers. That's fascism. That will ultimately be the struggle that will be fought (again). This is an educative process and while it is still available perhaps that which will spread new ideas is the net just like the Merchant Marine used to in the early days. Remember there was a brutal repression and a first world war between the 1905 revolution in Russia and the 1917 one. The Great Strike in Britain was still 10 years in the future. Thanks John, I'm glad somebody got something out of it. I don't know about the idea of the 99% ers however. When a motorcycle magazine noted that outlaw bikers like the Hells Angels were only 1% of the people who rode motorcycles, they took that as a compliment and called themselves 1%ers - One Percenters. Now they say that 1% of the people of the USA are millionaires, and given tax breaks, bailouts, etc., while the rest of us are forced to suffer. I'm not sure if those numbers are correct, but I think that's where they get the 99%ers, but its hard to get everybody to agree on anything, and will be really hard for that large of a consensus, when I think the goal should be to get the millionaires to agree to the proposed program, agree to pay their share of the tax burden and join the revolt, because they too have been hurt by the greed of a few and the system's failures. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Parker Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 (edited) That's a great post imo, BK. The last two lines in particular. JFK was great with brief truisms. I think the first of the last two is perhaps slightly obscure. In seems to bespeak a deep knowledge hampered by something. It doesn't directly in itself address the matter of the whole spectrum of dynamics involved. Mother Theresa called the US the poorest country in the world. Being poor means not having enough and in the end it is those who really don't have enough that pay. The US is the wealthiest country in the world. They have room to move. It won't be the end of the system that creates these situations. The road to there is long. This will educate many, and hopefully that will benefit any future actions. I think the international component (of the declaration) is significant. Ultimately it will be a matter of on which side the Presidency (not the President person, tho Hugo Black had something to say about that) lands. This playing off with both sides is precicely what enabled the german National Socialist Workers Party at a time when Germany was in a serious economic melt down to defeat the only major opponent, the German Communist Party by appealing to fundamentally lumpem type mindsets hand in hand with the bankers. That's fascism. That will ultimately be the struggle that will be fought (again). This is an educative process and while it is still available perhaps that which will spread new ideas is the net just like the Merchant Marine used to in the early days. Remember there was a brutal repression and a first world war between the 1905 revolution in Russia and the 1917 one. The Great Strike in Britain was still 10 years in the future. Thanks John, I'm glad somebody got something out of it. I don't know about the idea of the 99% ers however. When a motorcycle magazine noted that outlaw bikers like the Hells Angels were only 1% of the people who rode motorcycles, they took that as a compliment and called themselves 1%ers - One Percenters. Now they say that 1% of the people of the USA are millionaires, and given tax breaks, bailouts, etc., while the rest of us are forced to suffer. I'm not sure if those numbers are correct, but I think that's where they get the 99%ers, but its hard to get everybody to agree on anything, and will be really hard for that large of a consensus, when I think the goal should be to get the millionaires to agree to the proposed program, agree to pay their share of the tax burden and join the revolt, because they too have been hurt by the greed of a few and the system's failures. BK Bill, the percentages are not accurate. They know that. It's just a catch-phrase... a rallying cry... The exact numbers are meaningless. The point is, everyone knows the REAL numbers are out of whack and that there is great inequity. I don't think many would take the 1-99 ratio as realistic. The last figures I saw for the US were for 2007. In that year, 20% of the population held 93% of the wealth. Crying out the "we are the 80 percenters and we are as mad as hell!" doesn't have quite the same ring. Regarding indigenous uprisings in general, all I will say is that it can take years for clues to emerge as to how they really came about - if at all. To this day, respected historians claim that the Hungarian Uprising had nothing to do with the US - yet the US got exactly the result it wanted - for the Soviet Union to intervene and crush the uprising. Here are the facts I just posted to Answers: In 1958 the CIA reported that, "This breath-taking and undreamed-of state of affairs not only caught many Hungarians off-guard, it also caught us off-guard, for which we can hardly be blamed since we had no inside information, little outside information, and could not read the Russians' minds."But it was far from "undreamed of". To get to the truth of the matter, we need to go back to June, 1953 and a NSC report titled, Interim United States Objectives and Actions to Exploit the Unrest in the Satellite States. Point 2a of that report states, "In East Germany and other satellite areas, where feasible, covertly stimulate acts and attitudes of resistance short of mass rebellion aimed at putting pressure on Communist authority for specific reforms, discrediting such authority and provoking open Soviet intervention." So whilst the mass rebellion itself may not have been intended, and therefore came as a surprise, elsewhere in the report, it is also noted that the nourishment of resistance in Satellite countries should be done "without compromising it's spontaneous nature". In any case, the ultimate objective was achieved; to wit, "provoking open Soviet intervention." The only reason for wanting to provoke the Soviets into such an action would be to bolster support for anti-Communist actions - which in turn fills the coffers of the pentagon and all the private contractors of war machinery. Read more: http://wiki.answers....g#ixzz1aEUdaEHx The original piece is here: http://reopenkennedy...garian-uprising What I'm saying is that it may be too early to tell exactly what/who has instigated the Arab uprisings. On the face of it, it seems loony to suggest that the US would provoke the crushing of "freedom" in a soviet satellite -- but that is precisely what the record shows. Why is it ignored in the history books? Or are historians just a bunch of arse-wipes who couldn't find a beer in a brewery? I suspect that description may in fact fit quite a few... while others are just mouthpieces for the MICC. The fact that the Wall Streeters have no clearly defined aims indicates it probably is a truly spontaneous movement -- as opposed to the Tea Party which had a set agenda from the get-go -- and funnily enough -- one that met the aims of the MICC... Edited October 9, 2011 by Greg Parker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 We Are the 99 Percent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 9, 2011 Author Share Posted October 9, 2011 Some more for the mix http://www.greenleft.org.au/ http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48979 http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48975 also no doubt John Pilger will have something to write about it (follow link in John Pilger topic) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 10, 2011 Author Share Posted October 10, 2011 http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine The Shock Doctrine In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets. Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay. The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. International Editions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 10, 2011 Author Share Posted October 10, 2011 Havana. October 6, 2011 Chronicle of indignation on Wall Street David Brooks EVERYONE wants this to be the United States' Tahrir Square, a Puerta del Sol, an Athens, or a Santiago de Chile, and everyone – authorities, mass media, leftists – suppose that something could or should explode in this country given the crises, the greed of big business, extreme inequity and unemployment. Perhaps that is why something strange happened on the way to the occupation of Wall Street. Via Internet social networks, independent activists called for 20, 000 people to occupy Wall Street on September 17 and denounce the economic inequity, greed and political corruption brought on by the rich. They announced their objective of creating a Tahrir Square in the New York City financial district, indicating that they were inspired by the Arab movements, as well as the "indignados" in Spain and students in Chile, among others. On September 17, some four or five hundred appeared and, as of last week, had not achieved their goal of occupying Wall Street, although some progressive media reported and repeated that thousands had arrived and surrounded Wall Street. This is not entirely inaccurate. Those who had occupied Wall Street September 17 were the police. They closed off the entire area around the Stock Exchange and even tourists were denied access throughout the day, although protesters were allowed to enter briefly "to express themselves." This image of Wall Street, empty and guarded by the police, with the famous statue of a bull on Broadway, the symbol of Wall Street's virility, cordoned off with metal barricades and police officers was almost surreal: the state protecting capital. At the end of this first day of protest, the demonstrators, in their majority white and university educated, decided to remain in a small square three blocks from Wall Street, which they christened Freedom Plaza, and some 200 activists have been here all week. The following Saturday more than 80 were arrested as they marched through the Union Square area, with the police using excessive force which, as always, created media attention for the protesters who would have otherwise gone unnoticed. They say that they will not leave until… well, this continues to be discussed in daily "general assemblies" during which those gathered affirm that they are practicing democracy in the streets, given the country's corrupt political system which ignores the interests of 99% of the people. "These Wall Street people are playing with our future," a participant commented. Others give dozens of variations on the theme, how Wall Street has made off with democracy and left in its place unemployment, debt and disaster for the great majority. Many have what they consider a "good education" but are facing an increasingly bleak future and are, for now, unemployed. New figures from the Census Office reveal that young adults have the lowest employment rate since World War II (only 55.3% have jobs). Some analysts speak of a "lost generation." Many express their disenchantment with the political system. One said, "I worked for Obama's election for months, but I wouldn't do it again." Very similar, in this way, to his counterparts in the Puerta del Sol or Cairo. There are no contingents representing organizations. There is little contact with other social layers, such as the labor unions, civic organizations, immigrants or students. Many are surprised that there are not more people demonstrating, since on Internet social networks millions have expressed their support and said they would participate. The first call, by the Canadian magazine Adbusters, was made in June and, last month, the community of 'hacktivists' Anonymous joined in. No one can explain why all of this cyber-participation over the past few months has not manifested itself in a broader physical presence in the streets. Perhaps more interesting than the size or nature of the protest, is the reaction it has provoked. This small demonstration has managed to achieve surprising coverage in the media, almost all of it positive. Figures such as Michael Moore, comedian Roseanne Barr and the satirical Stephen Colbert have visited and/or supported the effort. On the other hand, this protest effort has successfully shown just how worried the authorities are about a possible explosion of popular anger against finance capital. In fact, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the richest man in the city, when asked his opinion of the demonstrations during a radio talk show, said that "you have lots of kids graduating from college who can't find jobs. That's what happened in Cairo, happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here." Many of the corporate media, as well the progressive, sent reporters and covered the events with unusual generosity – in the past there have been demonstrations of tens of thousands of people which were ignored by the country's principal mass media. It was as if the press, along with the activists, wanted something big to happen, that a version of Tahrir Square would emerge here. "The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high … history proves that people, when they’ve had enough, aren’t going to take it anymore," Michael Moore said of the protest on a recent television program. He called on communities across the United States to organize their own versions of "occupy Wall Street," and insisted “There's a lot of rebellion bubbling beneath the surface in this country… and it's going to increase. These people have stolen our future." The main question remains: How is it that nothing has yet happened here similar to what is being seen in the Arab countries, in Madrid, Barcelona and Santiago de Chile? Even more surprising in the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression, with the political elite deplored by the vast majority of citizens. For now, the occupation of Wall Street has not been achieved. Some say that the action is a first effort which could become something much bigger. And many are waiting, both the powerful and those who can make the powerful tremble. (Taken from La Jornada) PRINT THIS ARTICLE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 How a Canadian magazine sparked the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations: Revolutionary Program: Canadian Adbusters Magazine Sparks Occupy Wall Street Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 15, 2011 Author Share Posted October 15, 2011 Interesting. We'll see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted October 15, 2011 Author Share Posted October 15, 2011 I've taken the liberty of fiddling with part of an article : By Rachel Rose Hartman | The Ticket – Wed, Oct 12, 2011 "Rubbery writing and figures "American Jobs Act" The numbers for this bill only spiked when respondents to a survey from NBC/Wall Street Journal learned about its provisions in some detail : When NBC pollsters asked simply if Congress should pass the "American Jobs Act", or not : 30 percent of respondents said yes 22 percent of respondents said no 44 percent of respondents had no opinion When pollsters told them some details, including that the "American Jobs Act" would : -cut payroll taxes, -fund new road construction, -extend unemployment benefits -remove tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. - NBC reports that then : 63 percent of respondents said yes 32 percent of respondents said no One element of the bill in particular enjoyed wide support : -The proposal to remove tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and Corporations. 64 percent of respondents said yes 31 percent of respondents said no The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points is set for release Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. ET." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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