Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Ed Jewett]

6 October 2011
OWS Is a Kick in the Ass to Intellectuals http://cryptome.org/0005/ows-intellect.htm

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Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:17:33 -0500
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift[at]gmail.com>
To: nettime-l[at]mail.kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> more on Wall St (and Wisconsin)
Hey Dan, thanks for a great text and a reminder of one of the most important struggles in the US in recent years. Occupy Wisconsin!

http://eipcp.net/transversal/1011/wang/enFrom One Moment to the Next, Wisconsin to Wall Street
Dan S. Wang
[Excerpt] Of the many differences, what strikes me now as probably the most consequential in terms of movement character and future evolution, is the comparatively abstract target: "Wall Street," or "the banksters" or the 1%. In Wisconsin we have a central figure, Governor Scott Walker, and a host of background players (the Fitzgeralds, the Kochs, Paul Ryan, Alberta Darling, JB Van Hollen, etc), each of whom is a real person who can be personally targeted. Most of them being public figures, their career trajectories, at least, offer activists something by which we can measure our strength. With OWS, the monster before us‹the banking structure, the corporate political system, and financialized capital in its entirety is so huge, global, faceless, out of control, and fundamentally rotten, that it is difficult even for informed people to identify and prioritize specific aims, much less individual targets.

I would take this as an opportunity rather than a disadvantage. When the system, in its faceless abstraction, presents you with a bill you cannot pay, then there is an existential interest in confronting the abstraction itself. We have good names for that, ones that everyone can recognize: greed, dehumanization, capitalism. Since there is no single face to these abstractions, ultimately you have to look around and say, those concepts are in operation right here, where we live, in our town. They are what is faceless in the faces that we see. The abstractions are concrete. We must struggle with them in our own everyday relation to society.
The Wisconsin protests inspired people all over the United States. They showed us that a broad-based social movement on the left is possible. The movement that began on Wall Street is a kick in the ass to intellectuals: it shows us that people are ready to resist the faceless abstraction, and it challenges everyone - the organic intellectuals, ourselves - to develop ways of talking and understanding that can resist and transform "the great decentered multinational communications network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects." I fully agree that to do this, the struggles must be articulated in their particularities. But they also must be articulated to what is entirely new: the readiness of a broad-spectrum American social movement to confront the very heart of our society, which is a hierarchy, a rank order defined by the control over money.
"We are the 99%" has a lot of meanings. Such as: "We have to abolish the system of measurement that gives the faceless faces control of the world." It's really time to stop business as usual.

Occupy Wall Street, occupy Chicago, occupy everything -

Brian
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[Peter Lemkin]

An interesting little fact that all need to mull over.... It was HS and the NSC that ordered that the barriers be up and to stop protesters from entering Wall Street - not the City nor NYPD! So, HS et al. considers that area a 'National Security Facility'!! Think about it. Our money they play with [though they think it theirs], but we are not allowed to enter the holy of holies - their Temple of Greed. Of course 'Wall Street' is not just on Wall Street - but spread throughout the City and Country in Banks, Brokerage Houses, Insurance Companies, Corporate Offices, Homes, properties and hidden accounts of the ultra-rich, and Ancillary Bankster facilities - the other temples to that same cult. :mexican:

[Ed Jewett]

OCCUPY (Insert Your City Here): Protesting Capitalism's Crisis

Let me spool you up on what's going on with the Occupy movement. It's an open source protest (there's lots about how open source protests and insurgencies work on this blog, in posts all the way back to 2004). So, it's not like the protests you've seen in the past (just as the insurgency in Iraq was different than 20th Century insurgencies). This protest is more like what we saw in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc. You know, the protests that toppled governments. The big difference between this protest and those protests is that it's not directed at governments. It's aimed at companies. Not just any companies, it's aimed at the banks that run/own the global economy. The heart of the global Capitalist system.So, why have governments suffered disintermediation (either consciously or subconsciously by these protestors)? This protest is ignoring governments and standard political processes because:

• governments are much weaker than the global economy (they are bankrupt, hollow shells of what they were at the end of the Cold War),
  
• they are too ineffectual and/or corrupt to change anything even if they are coerced (see the US, Ireland and Greece for recent examples),
  
• too little will change even if the government changes parties (see the US for how lame politics and politicians have become).
  

What Occupy is Really AboutThe real reason we are seeing this movement right now is becauseCapitalism, the last great ideological system, is in crisis. This isn't merely a crisis of outcomes (economic depression, financial panic, etc.), it's a crisis of BELIEF. While people generally believe in the idea of capitalism, a critical mass of people now think that the global capitalist system we currently have is so badly run, so corrupt, so terrible at delivering results that it needs either a) a complete overhaul or b) we need to build something new. In short, in its tiny way, this protest may be the start of a reformation of the church of capitalism. A splintering that may change everything.... For better or worse depending on how well you did in the old, corrupt system.

Posted by John Robb on Friday, 07 October 2011 at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (45)

[Peter Lemkin]

This afternoon, a contingent of Occupy Wall Street protesters will march to Washington Square Park for a massive general assembly at 3 p.m. They describe it as an opportunity to recruit new supporters: "The Washington Square Park thing is a great way to bring us to the next level," said Michael Fix, an organizer of the demonstration. Already, a flock of skateboarders have started making their way down Broadway.

[Ed Jewett]

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[TD]Published Sep 30 2011 by Yes! Magazine, Archived Sep 30 2011
Five ways #OccupyWallStreet has succeeded

by Mark Engler
#OccupyWallStreet protests are now well into their second week, and they are increasingly capturing the public spotlight. This is because, whatever limitations their occupation has, the protesters have done many things right.
I will admit that I was skeptical about the #OccupyWallStreet effort when it was getting started. My main concerns were the limited number of participants and the lack of coalition building. One of the things that was most exciting about the protests in Madisonand the global justice protests of old such as Seattle and A16was that they brought together a wide range of constituencies, suggesting what a broad, inclusive progressive movement might look like. You had student activists and unaffiliated anarchists, sure; but you also had major institutional constituencies including the labor movement, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, and community groups. The solidarity was powerful. And, in the context of a broader coalition, the militancy, creativity, and artistic contributions of the autonomist factions made up for their lack of an organized membership base.
With #OccupyWallStreet, the protest did not draw in any of the major institutional players on the left. Participants have come independentlymostly from anarchist and student activist circlesand turnout has been limited. Some of the higher estimates for the first day's gathering suggest that a thousand people might have been there, and only a few hundred have been camping out.
That said, this relatively small group has been holding strong. As their message has gained tractionfirst in the alternative media, and then in mainstream news sourcesthey have drawn wider interest. On Tuesday night, Cornel West visited the occupied Zuccotti Park and spoke to an audience estimated at 2,000. Rallies planned for later in the week will likely attract larger crowds. People will come because the occupation is now a hot story.
#OccupyWallStreet has accomplished a great deal in the past week and a half, with virtually no resources. The following are some of the things the participants have done that allowed what might have been a negligible and insignificant protest to achieve a remarkable level of success:
1. They chose the right target.

The #OccupyWallStreet protesters have been often criticized for not having clear demands. They endured a particularly annoying cheap shot from New York Times writer Ginia Bellafante, who (quoting a stockbroker sympathetically) resurrected the old canard that no one who uses an Apple computer can possibly say anything critical about capitalism. Such charges are as predictable as the tides. Media commentators love to condescend to protesters, and they endlessly recycle criticism of protests being naïve and unfocused.
I am among those who believe that the occupation would have benefited from having clearer demands at the outsetand that these would have been helpful in shaping the endgame that is to come. But protesters have largely overcome the lack of a particularly well-defined messaging strategy by doing something very important: choosing the right target.
Few institutions in our society are more in need of condemnation than the big banks and stockbrokers based where the critics are now camped. "Why are people protesting Wall Street?" For anyone who has lived through the recent economic collapse and the ongoing crises of foreclosure and unemployment, this question almost answers itself.
The protest's initial call to action repeatedly stressed the need to get Wall Street money out of politics, demanding "Democracy not Corporatocracy." Since then, many protesters have been emphasizing the idea that "We Are the 99 Percent" being screwed by the country's wealthiest 1 percent. At Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political powerin the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutionsis destroying financial security for everyone else?....
So, yes, the people willing to engage in protests like these at the start may lack (or reject the need for) media strategies, organizational hierarchies, and messaging theories. But they're among the very few people trying to channel widespread anger into activism rather than resignation, and thus deserve support and encouragementand helpfrom anyone claiming to be sympathetic to their underlying message.

Notably, young protesters have been able to convey the idea that their generation, in particular, has been betrayed by our economy. This idea was picked up in remarkably hard-hitting commentary at MarketWatch.com, which reads like more like something you'd expect to find in the socialist press than on a business website:

[A]sk yourself how you might act if you were in school or fresh out of it or young and unemployed. What future has Wall Street, the heart and brain of our capitalist country, promised you? How does it feel to be the sons, daughters and grand kids of a "me" generation that's run up the debt and run down the economy?
Unemployment is between 13% and 25% for people under 25. Student loans are defaulting at about 15% at a time when more young people have no alternative but to borrow to pay for school.
Meanwhile, Wall Street bonuses continue to be paid at close to all-time highs. Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS), took home $13.2 million last year, including a $3.2 million raise.

Such a message resonates with many, and protesters did something important to attract them:
2. They made a great poster.

I write this partially in jest. There is a joke among labor organizers that if you are spending all your time obsessing over the quality of your posters or handouts, rather than going out to actually talk to people, you are in big trouble.
In this case, however, there's some truth to the idea that posters matter. When you're not mobilizing an established organizational membership, but rather trying to capture the imagination of unaffiliated activists, protest planning is more akin to promoting a concert than staging a workplace strike. And if you're doing that kind of promotion, how cool your call to arms is makes a difference.
#OccupyWallStreet has benefited from a series of great posters and promotional materials. Foremost among them is a lovely depiction of a ballerina dancing on top of Wall Street's famous bull statue, created by the veteran leftist image-makers at Adbusters. The text below the bull reads simply: "#OccupyWallStreet. September 17th. Bring tent."
The poster hinted that the event would be exciting and creative and audacious. It suggested that culture jamming and dissident art would be part of the adventure. And it pointed to another thing the protesters did right:
3. They gave their action time to build.

Most protests take place for one afternoon and then are finished. Had #OccupyWallStreet done the same, it would already have been forgotten.
Instead, planners told participants to get ready to camp out. The event operated on the premise that challenging Wall Street would take a while, and that things would build with time. In fact, this is exactly what has happened. It took a few days for alternative press sources to catch on, but now the occupation is a leading story at outlets such as Democracy Now!.
The extended time frame for the protest has allowed for the drama of direct action to deepen, which is my next point about the protesters:
4. They created a good scenario for conflict.

By claiming space in Zuccotti Park (also known as Liberty Plaza), #OccupyWallStreet set up an action scenario that has effectively created suspense and generated interest over time.
Participants there have invoked Tahrir Square. On the one hand, the comparison is silly, but on the other hand, the fact that occupations of public space have taken on a new significance in the past year is another thing that made #OccupyWallStreet a good idea. If the authorities allow them to continue camping out in lower Manhattan, the protesters can claim victory for their experiment in "liberated space." Of course, everyone expects that police will eventually swoop in and clear the park. But, contrary to what some people think, civil disobedients have long known that arrests do not work against the movement. Rather, they illustrate that participants are willing to make real sacrifices to speak out against Wall Street's evils.
The fact that police have used undue force (in one now-famous incident, pepper spraying women who were already detained in a mesh police pen and clearly doing nothing to resist arrest) only reinforces this message.
When will the police finally come and clear out the occupation's encampment? We don't know. And the very question creates further suspense and allows the protest to continue gaining momentum.
5. They are using their momentum to escalate.

Lastly, but probably most importantly, the #OccupyWallStreet effort is using its success at garnering attention in the past week and a half to go even bigger. Their action is creating offshoots, with solidarity protests (#OccupyBoston, #OccupyLA) now gathering in many other cities. Protesters in Liberty Plaza are encouraging more participants to join them. And they are preparing more people to risk arrest or other police reprisal.
There's a lot of misinformation about the occupation of Wall Street. What's it really about?
It might seem obvious that a protest movement would treat a successful event as an occasion to escalate. But, in fact, it is quite rare. More established organizations are almost invariably afraid to do so: afraid of legal repercussions, afraid of the resources it would require to sustain involvement, afraid of bad press or other negative outcomes. Such timidity is anathema to strategies of nonviolent direct action.
In this respect, the fact that #OccupyWallStreet has not relied on established progressive organizations ends up being a strength. Its independent participants are inspired by the increasing attention their critique of Wall Street is getting, and they are willing to make greater sacrifices now that their action has begun to capture the public imagination.
This can only be regarded as a positive development. For the more that people in this country are talking about why outraged citizens would set up camp in the capital of our nation's financial sector, the better off we will be. #OccupyWallStreet protesters have gotten that much right.

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Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com. He is a contributor to Dissent Magazine, where this article originally appeared.


Original article available here


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The Conversation

"But communication is two-sided - vital and profound communication makes demands also on those who are to receive it... demands in the sense of concentration, of genuine effort to receive what is being communicated. "

Roger Sessions

[Ed Jewett]

Conservatives Support Protests

Posted on October 7, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Conservative Groups Support Protests

Last month, I called on conservative groups to endorse the Occupy Wall Street protests:

It is time for some big conservative endorsements, to rally around the non-partisan issues important to all Americans.
The Tea Party should endorse the protests, but so should the Oath Keepers, taxpayer rights groups, conservative Christians, limited government groups, and all other conservative groups.

Yesterday, the Oath Keepers and a founding member of the Tea Party announced that they are supporting the protests:

Oath Keepers sees good reason to stand in the streets with these awakening souls and protect their right to free speech, to peacefully assemble, and to redress their grievances to their government, as the Constitution prescribes for all Americans. That is one thing. Another facet of our initiative is to use these public gatherings to reach and teach many who now hunger for the truth we can show them how the Constitution will protect them better than an oversized, bloated Federal behemoth hell-bent on controlling every aspect of each citizen's life.
To point this out to the masses, Oath Keepers is organizing a joint effort along with Alex Jones of Infowars dot com (who himself called for an Occupy the Fed movement); Steven Vincent of End The Fed; Danny Panzella's Truth Squad TV; Brandon Smith of Alt-Mkt.com; Gary Franch of Restore The Republic; and others as quickly as we can contact them. Remember Bob Dwyer, the guy who started the first Tea Party to launch the Ron Paul revolution? He's in. The forces of Constitutional rule of law must muster now to deflect the bile being belched forth by the socialist/statist extremists …. Oath Keepers has the message American youth need. If we do not go out into the street and give them the truth, can we really say we're still honoring our Oath?

Common Ground Between Conservatives and Liberals

As I've previously noted, both liberals and conservatives hate corporate socialism (where the federal government favors giant corporations at the expense of the little guy) . The Oathkeepers announcement zeroes in on this issue in a way that both conservatives and liberals can agree on:

When a corporation becomes larger than is useful, and seeks to concentrate financial power into the political and governmental spheres, its likeness is no longer the King Snake, but instead is more like a Rattlesnake. At a point we call such corps "Monopoly Capitalists". By the time a grouping of such Monopoly Capitalist corps are setting U.S. foreign policy, which the arms industry certainly does nowadays, the problem becomes unbearably apparent. Bechtel comes to mind, along with Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Monsanto, General Electric, et al.
That part of Wall Street is certainly to blame. But that is not "Capitalism". Instead, it is "Monopoly Capitalism", and it is now observably moving America into a new world order with intent to place America under the alleged authority of a one-world government. As such, Monopoly Capitalism is un-Constitutional and must be opposed.

Karl Denninger one of the founders of the Tea Party supports the protests (even if he doesn't agree with some of the positions taken by some of the protesters) Denninger posted the following letter today:

You know what the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is?
It is all the things that were in the original Tea Party, but were steadily ignored as the TP became a Republican booster club.
The Tea Party is a contradiction. They want a balanced budget, but they also want the US military to intervene everywhere …. Individual rights are important too, but don't push it too far. After all, republicans came up with today's policies.
There are a few nuts in the OWS crowd, but from what I hear "Occupy Wall Street" is about bringing the fraudsters to justice. Its about changing the banker/government dynamic that runs this country. It's about free markets. It's about ending endless debt. It's about stopping the wars. It's about the rule of law. It's about the libertarian soul of America.
Since the TP lost the focus of addressing the root problems of America, they remain unresolved.
***
Pete Blome
Chair, Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County

Michael Moore Doesn't Speak for the Protest

While Michael Moore says that capitalism itself is the problem, Mr. Moore is wrong. Indeed, one of the main organizers of the protests told me that Moore's statement is very counter-productive.
As I've previously noted:

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, heanswered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I feel the same way about free market capitalism.
It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.
If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but onlyif they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has notpracticed free market capitalism for some time.
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People pointing to the Western economies and saying that capitalism doesn't work is as incorrect as pointing to Stalin's murder of millions of innocent people and blaming it on socialism. Without the government's creation of the too big to fail banks, Fed's intervention in interest rates and the markets, government-created moral hazardemboldening casino-style speculation, corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model ofbribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn't have gotten nearly as bad.
As Justice Louis Brandeis said:

In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipotent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.

[Confirmed here.]
If there has been lawlessness and corruption among Wall Street players, it was partially simply modeling the lawlessness and corruption of the Executive Branch and Congress members. I've written elsewhere about how the government lied by saying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was behind 9/11 (when he didn't and wasn't), that we don't torture (when we did), that we don't spy on Americans (when we did), etc. Just like kids model what their parents do as well as what they say, Wall Street modeled the unlawful and corrupt actions of our government employees.
Being against capitalism because of the mess we've gotten in would be like Gandhi saying that he is against Western civilization because of the way the British behaved towards India.

Corrupt Politicians Enable Wall Street Corruption

The Oathkeepers and conservative alternative media powerhouse Alex Jones also zero in on the Federal Reserve system as a core problem. As Oath Keepers notes in its announcement:

Oath Keepers is planning to "Occupy The Fed Now!" and publicize this to remind the Occupy Wall Street people that the Fed is the source problem, without which the Wall Street criminals would be set back a hundred years. I will be posting our press release and a longer list of groups and orgs who will be joining Oath Keepers in this initiative.
We are currently drawing up our press release regarding our own response to the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, which will be Oath Keepers' official statement. We are now planning an official Oath Keepers project which we've named "Occupy The Fed Now!".
Yes, Oath Keepers has seen the need to block the attempted takeover of the populist movement generally referred to as Occupy Wall Street.
In an extensive phone conference on the evening of October 04, 2011, we heard from Oath Keepers who have attended Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy Los Angeles, and Occupy Seattle. The overall consensus from our people at these rallies is that most people attending the rallies are very open-minded to the Oath Keepers mission/message, and that they are hungry for answers. Indeed, our reports indicate that many Americans right now are awakening, in droves it seems, and they are full of questions for which we have the answer the Constitution for the united States of America.

While progressives might assume that the Fed has helped the economy from getting worse, or that the importance of ending the Fed is being overhyped, top economists and financial experts disagree. Seethis, this and this.
As I pointed out Monday, whatever people think the government should do, the D.C. politicos have actually been a large part of the problem:

Because government policy is ensuring high unemployment, it is not surprising that the American protesters are angry at the Federal Reserve and other government institutions, and not just the big Wall Street banks.
Remember, Bush and Obama's economic policies are virtually indistinguishable. Indeed,Obama actually likes high unemployment.
And as I noted in 2009, the government created the giant banks:

As MIT economics professor and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson points out today, the official White House position is that:

(1) The government created the mega-giants, and they are not the product of free market competition

(2) The White House needs to "regulate and oversee them", even though it is clear that the government has no real plans to regulate or oversee the banking behemoths

(3) Giant banks are good for the economy

Of course, the government has also made it policy to cover up fraud and protect the fraudsters, and so the free market has no chance to punish fraud or cleanse wrongdoing from the system.
Without government-created moral hazard emboldening casino-style speculation,corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model of bribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn't have gotten nearly so bad.
Indeed, the government is so corrupt that the head of the economics department at George Mason University says that D.C. politicians are worse than prostitutes … they are "pimps", since they are pimping out the American people to the financial giants.
And while co-option of government by the big banks is a huge problem, it is also true that corruption in government leads to corruption in the private sector. See this and this. The U.S. has truly become a banana republic, just like the worst Latin American countries.
So anyone who thinks that government would solve all of our problems if it were only freed from obstructionists is only seeing half the problem, and is falling for the oldest trick in the book … the ole' divide and conquer strategy.

[Ed Jewett]

WWII Vet to Wall Street Protesters: "I Am So Proud Of All You People"

Posted on October 7, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog
WWII and Other Military Vets Support Wall Street Protest

A reader posted the following comment regarding the Occupy Wall Street protests:

I am so proud of all you people who are showing your back bones, to stand up and put a stop to the Banking cartel, who is defining History, by insisting that We The People, use their Fiat Money system. Our Constitution states, that Only Gold and Silver shall be used as lawful Money. The So Called Federal Government, is really only to have Ten Square Miles, in which to conduct their so called wisdom to Protect the Sovereign States. But look at how much territory they call, Federal lands etc. We Have a rouge Government, which is completely out of control. Your movements of collective peaceful protests, are the beginning of the end for the crooked Fiat Money people. I am a WWII Vet, South Pacific Campaign. 94 years young, handy capped, from War Injuries. I want you to know from my Heart, I am so proud of each and every one of you. So Hang in there, your movement is just what this Country needs.

I'm not certain whether the reader is one of these gentlemen attending the Occupy Wall Street protests:


In fact, military men of all ages support the protests:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp-eapYpL...r_embedded

Posted in Politics / World News | 10 Comments

Libertarian Wall Street Protesters Demand End to the Fed

Posted on October 7, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog


Libertarians Support Wall Street Protest to End the Fed

Ron Paul says that the Wall Street protests are legitimate, and that they are really protesting against the Federal Reserve.
One of the protest organizers tells me that a large proportion of the protesters are Ron Paul supporters. Most of them believe that ending the Federal Reserve is the most important step to restore our country's prosperity. See this, this and this.
Remember, even the Wall Street Journal has called for the Fed to be broken up.
As I have extensively documented, the Fed is largely responsible for the economic crisis, and has failed to meet a single one of its stated mandates (let alone its implied ones).
The Fed has been enabler-in-chief for the corruption rampant on Wall Street.
And as I noted Tuesday:

Some very well-known economists also support ending the Fed.
For example, Milton Friedman said:

This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System… and that the severity of each of the major contractions 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities…
Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes excusable or not can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic this is the key political argument against an independent central bank…
To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

Austrian economists such as Murray Rothbard also would like to end the Fed:

Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking; © to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.

Congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have introduced bills to abolish the Fed.
And as I noted last week, most Americans want the Fed ended or at least reined in:

At least 75% of the American people want a full audit of the Fed, and most were against reconfirming Bernanke.
Indeed, as Bloomberg noted last December:

A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation's independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a poll shows.
***
Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn't retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo.

As I have extensively documented, the Fed is largely responsible for the economic crisis, and has failed to meet a single one of its stated mandates (let alone its implied ones).

Indeed, the Founding Fathers despised the British central bank, and said that the right to create their own credit and currency was one of the core battles in the Revolutionary War.

Obama Is Not the Answer

Libertarians also point out that while the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee are trying to hijack the Wall Street protests they have been part of the problem, not part of the solution.
They point out that Obama has appointed Wall Street insiders to all of his key economic posts, andaccepted more money from Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banks than anyone else (andis still raking it in). As such, despite his populist rhetoric, he's with Wall Street, not the protesters. Indeed, he is Wall Street.
They point out that Obama has continued the process of turning the U.S. into a banana republic, and whether you call it communism, fascism or crony capitalism, Obama has been at least as bad as Bush.
They point out that Obama has been a wolf in sheep's clothing, someone who thinks high levels of unemployment are good.
They point out that Obama has been more brutal than Bush and has destroyed our liberties even fasterthan Bush.
For these reasons, libertarians correctly state that re-electing Obama is not the answer. And they note that Ron Paul's consistent, decades-long positions are much closer to the American peoples' demandsthan Obama's.
Postscript: I voted for Obama. But anyone who still thinks Obama will save us is high.
On the other hand, libertarians have been out of power for a long time. Neoliberals and Neoconservatives two masks on a single face of corruption have been in the driver's seat for decades. Libertarians should welcome the protests as a chance to challenge the status quo, to promote liberty and to end the Fed the chief enabler of corruption in our country today.
Folks dismissing the Occupy protests as being Obama propaganda or left-wing haven't yet learned the facts, are blaming the fact that the mainstream Democratic party is trying to infiltrate the movement on the protesters, or are letting Fox, Drudge or other mainstream news sources blow a sub-set of the overall protests out of proportion. See this, this and this. Indeed, as the Associated Press notes, the protesters are fed up with BOTH mainstream parties.

Posted in Politics / World News | 7 Comments

[Keith Millea]

How about this:

Respectfully not letting Rep.John Lewis(human rights icon)give a statement to the crowd.All decisions are by consensus voting.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGM...e=youtu.be

[Ed Jewett]

DC Protest Pepper Spray Incident Incited By Agent Provocateurs

http://ampedstatus.org/dc-protest-pepper...vocateurs/

[Peter Lemkin]

How about this:

Respectfully not letting Rep.John Lewis(human rights icon)give a statement to the crowd.All decisions are by consensus voting.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGM...e=youtu.be

I think that is the only major mis-step this movement has made so far. He could have brought the Civil Rights Movement and many Blacks associated with it into this movement.....it might have alienated some; I hope he tries again and they allow him to speak. They likely didn't even know who he was, due to the age gap and historical amnesia in America. I know they have some fear the well-know persons could try to take over or co-opt their movement, but a speech by one - more so if it is an endorsement and asking those who respect them to respect OXS will not cause any harm. You can't build a movement without building a movement.