[URL="http://rt.com/tags/finance/"]Fury over corporate power in the US is spreading from New York across the country. Thousands have joined the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, angered by the economic slump that may lead to a revolution in the country. Robert David Steele, political analyst and former intelligence officer, told RT the US right now is much more desperate than people realize.
"We have 22 per cent unemployment and on our way to 30 per cent. We are 16 per cent below the poverty line and on our way to 30 per cent. There is no question in my mind that this is going to be a very dark winter in the United States,"he stated. "Unless the government restores its own integrity and starts paying attention to the public interest rather than to the special interests, I believe that we will have a form of revolution, initially non-violent, but with the potential to become violent," he added.
Despite the fact that "Occupy Wall Street" protesters have raised everything from lack of jobs to global warming, there is a common cause uniting the activists, Steele believes.
"These are not stupid people. They are very smart and they understand that at root this is about corruption in government and corruption on Wall Street," he explained. "And until you have electoral reform, you cannot restore the integrity of US government. So there is a common cause, but it is voiced in many different ways," he maintained.
The protest started out peacefully, but now it is the third week and more than 700 people have been arrested on Brooklyn Bridge. And according to Steele, the NYC police have on the one hand been very well-managed and on the other hand have gotten out of control at lower levels.
"My personal hope is that the general non-violent strike will be used to force the issue of electoral reform," he concluded.
Occupy Wall Street's first official release
October 1, 2011 in Action!
This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group.
This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
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 nonhuman 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 supposed to be 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 in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive 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.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
Techniques the Corporate Powers Will Use to Destroy the OWS Movement
By: spocko Thursday October 6, 2011 1:31 pm
"Remember, the guy who suggests getting the dynamite is usually the Fed."
- Old hippie saying
Who knows - this might even be the old hippie who said it. (Photo: DavidDennisPhotos.com at flickr.)
Yesterday morning a retired military officer friend (RMOF) and I were conversing about what might happen next with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Since Michael Westen of Burn Notice or Annie Walker from Covert Affairs weren't available, he offered some thoughts from the point of view of a non-fictional character who studies this stuff. I, as a media watcher and activist wanted to talk about how the media and power players will deal with the various actions and what we can do to predict the media's actions so we can get ahead of news and prepare. I also have delusions of influencing the narrative, but I'm afraid that shuttle craft might have left the ship.
Here are a few of his thoughts and some of my questions, predictions and suggestions.
RMOF: I expect "trouble" soon. I don't expect it from the protestors, but plants put in by the plutocrats or by violent individuals.
Spocko: Definitely. The media LOVE plants because they will create the kind of action that makes for good TV. What they are not good at is tracking down who has started the action and just how connected they really are to the movement. Today our new media can help. We already identified Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, the cop who pepper sprayed the penned in girls. I doubt the MSM have diligently tracked him down if only they had the footage. Even if they did it would be days later and they would have had to go though official channels.
Spocko ACTION Suggestion : In the following days the "folks at home" can look through the videos and photos and capture the plants, just like we found "Tony Bologna". Then make sure the MSM knows who these people are and who they might work for.
Spocko ProTip for OWS protesters: How can people identify plants at a protest?
Check out the "boots on the ground," literally.
[A] March organizer came by telling us there were "agitators looking to start stuff" and to not engage. "Look at their boots," he said. "They'll look like cop boots." Adrian Chen Gawker Live blog of OWS
Photo by Adrian Kinloch, Occupy Wall Street October 1st
Spocko:
What will be the trajectory of the escalation of violence?
RMOF: Trouble" will start with a shooting or looting. "Someone" will shoot a banker' or broker,' but sadly it will end up being some expendable minor functionary like a secretary or clerk who has no idea the guys in the $25,000.00 suits have decided to make a martyr.
Spocko: Sadly, I agree RMOF. I'm curious how this kind of stuff actually gets done.
RMOF: It isn't hard. Find a die hard Tea Partier or die-hard left wing Anarchist for that matter. Convince them that "the Man" has to be taught a lesson. They don't even have to shoot anyone. Just fire some shots in the air and run like hell. There would be a good chance some scared 20 year old cop would shoot someone, or (even worse for the movement), the crowd would become convinced the cops are shooting. All it takes is a brick to the head and you have "the cop killing rioters."
Second way: Find a security company that specializes in less savory side of the business. Make sure only a few people are involved. Plant your people and go; let them encourage anger, violence, etc. as "the only way to win!"
Spocko: This is beginning to sound like conspiracy stuff, people don't really do this in America these days, do they? (I asked, only slightly ironically and because I want to prove to people just how SOP this method is for certain groups and that SOP is used by professionals and people who play at being professionals.)
RMOF: In the US, there was the FBI/Army COINTELPRO (putting spies' in the peace movement; not surprisingly, it came to nothing). On the good side, the FBI did it in the KKK as well (and I expect, still does it in bike gangs, drug gangs, street gangs, skinheads, et al).
Recent evidence: The Denver Police inserted an undercover cop in the crowd at the 2008 Dem Convention. (I looked up the story, internal documents obtained months later proved the insertion actually happened because the undercover cop got pepper sprayed. The issue the ACLU raised, "Did the staged confrontation by police pretending to be violent inflame other protesters or officers?")
Bottom line, it isn't hard, and if done properly, can turn public opinion against a movement in a heartbeat. Just think of what the Black Panthers did for the Civil Rights movementwithout white liberals, it all pretty much stopped.
All it takes is one stupid act of senseless violencethe adversary has no problem in using violence to protect themselves. King and Gandhi learned that. They also taught (in a very Sun Tzu way), that it is the wrong way to respondviolence with non-violence is the way to beat it.
Spocko: Surely the big money players won't be stupid and tell plants to escalate the violence intentionally. Don't they know that an overreaction by police will just help create sympathy for cause and the protestors?
RMOF: The bigger the movement gets, and the more it develops, the more likely the plutocrats will see it as a threat and move to destroy it. Not politically or financially, but physically.
The Tea Party was easyjust add some evangelicalism, a healthy dollup of racism, and put your people and cash in charge, and is yours (btw, right out of the playbook of the post-Reconstruction Era KKK and the demise of the Agrarian and Socialist movements). OWS, however, is filled with people with little to loseno jobs, or they work menial labor. No homes, no mortgages, no credit cardsin other words, the rich have no leverage over them. This makes them very, very dangerous.
Spocko: So say that we don't find out about the plutocrat plants until months later, what else can we expect following an escalation of violence?
RMOF: Open discussions on an expanded role in law enforcement by the active duty military, especially in "major disasters or events." Keep in mind, what works for hurricane relief will also work to put down insurrection.
A wide spectrum media campaign to discredit the OWS movement. From all directions, not just Fox Newsabout corruption in the OWS leadership, tax evasion, jaywalking, whatever. This will come first, as it is needed to turn public opinion against OWS.
Spocko: Great points. Thanks for sharing your expertise and I now owe you a glass of Romulan ale.
Today's Big Question: How can we have the OWS protesters' backs?
I know a lot of people who were involved with getting communities out to the protests, they are thrilled by the support they are getting. They also are often asked what they can do to help. Besides joining a protest here is another suggestion.
Spocko ACTION suggestion:
We always talk about having people's back. Here is a opportunity for us to "have the backs" of the OWS people.
Uncovering or fabricating dirt on people is an old tactic. It can and should be countered, by bloggers the instant they start seeing it. If you are following the MSM coverage and you see them start quoting dirt about the history of the leaders or people quoted make sure they are accurate and in context and then demand factual corrections. I'm not talking about Fox News, but TV stations and major papers. Demand they name the sources of this dirt. We know the MSM won't talk about who is feeding them the dirt, but we need to at least remind them to provide their famous "balance" when they run a false statement about a leader or a protester they interview. (Remember the world "allegedly?" ) The corporate media will not do the work to verify the facts or context of smears, we have to do it for them.
People out here in the blogosphere need to understand that this will be the next step and it is very powerful. The discrediting of leaders is a multi-million dollar industry that works in the service of anyone who has the money and the will. The big money people will first covertly and then overtly engage in smears. We can push back, consider it your simple way to help when you are unable to protest in person. This is how you can help right from your desktop, laptop, iPad or or tablet.
LLAP,
Spocko
Since I'm a brainstorming kind of guy, before I competed this piece I was thinking of possible headlines. I thought you might enjoy some of my rejected headlines. They are also included to make sure the SEO engines find this piece when humans don't.
Will Violent Infiltrators Hired by Wall Street MOTUs be good for the Occupy Wall Street Movement?
Cracking Heads on Wall Street How it will be done and how the media will cover it.
Working for the Clamp Down Who will be starting the riots at Occupy Wall Street?
How will the Media cover any upcoming violence at OWS events?
If Wall Street doesn't want another Kent State then why are they hiring agent provocateurs?
The Guy who Suggests Getting Dynamite is Usually the Fed. Who will escalate violence at OWS?
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
(updated below)
The Occupy Wall Street protest has been growing in numbers, respectability, and media attention for several weeks now. Despite that, The New York Times financial columnist who specializes in Wall Street coverage, Andrew Ross Sorkin, has neither visited the protests nor written about them until today. Ina column invoking the now-familiar journalistic tone of a zoologist examining a bizarre new species of animal discovered in the wild, Sorkin explains what prompted him to finally pay attention (via Michael Whitney):
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthandafter getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?" the C.E.O. asked me. I didn't have an answer. "We're trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this," he continued, clearly concerned. "Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?"
How interesting that when a CEO "of a major bank" wants to know how threatening these protests are, he doesn't seek out corporate advisers or dispatch the bank's investigators, but instead gets the NYTs notoriously banker-friendly Wall Street reporter on the phone and assigns him to report back. How equally interesting that if this NYT financial columnist can't address the concerns and questions of a CEO "of a major bank," he hops to it to find out what was demanded of him. Sorkin did what he was told, cautiously concluding:
As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don't have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn't seem like a brutal group at least not yet.
As I noted last week when critiquing the patronizing, dismissive and scornful attacks on these protests from establishment circles, the "message" is clear and obvious enough, and Sorkin had no trouble discerning a significant part of it: "the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap." He added: "that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge as we've seen in some European countries if our economy continues to struggle." His CEO banking friend is right to be concerned: if not about this protest in particular then about the likelihood of social unrest generally, emerging as a result of their plundering and pilfering. That healthy fear on the part of the oligarchs has been all too absent.
Though it's not evident in Sorkin's column (nor in this characteristically snotty, petty, pseudo-intellectual condescension of yesterday from The New Republic), the prevailing media (and progressive) narrative about the protests has rapidly shifted from these-are-childish-vapid-losers to there-is-something-significant-happening-here. In part that's because the protests have endured and grown; in part it's because the participants are far less homogeneous and suscepitble to caricature than originally assumed; in part it's because they are motivated bygenuine and widespread financial suffering that huge numbers of Americans know intimately even though it receives so little attention from insulated media stars; in part it's because NYPD abuse became its own galvanizing force and served to highlight the validity of the grievances; and in part because their refusal to adhere to the demands from the political and media class for Power Point professionalization and organizational hierarchies has enabled the protests to remain real, organic, independent, and passionate.
What will determine how long-lasting and significant is the impact of these protests is whether they allow themselves to be exploited into nothing more than vote-producing organs of the Democratic Party the way the GOP so successfully converted the Tea Party into nothing more than a Party re-branding project. There is no question that such efforts are underway, as organizations that serve as Party loyalists try to glom onto the protests and distort them into partisan tools.
I have a hard time seeing that working. After all, the reason this is a street protest movement (rather than, say, a voter-registration crusade or an OFA project) is precisely because the protesters concluded that dedicating themselves to the President's re-election and/or the Democratic Party is hardly a means forcombating Wall Street's influence, rising wealth inequality or corporatist control of the political process. Still, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that the reason these protests are now receiving more respect in establishment venues is because those venues now see some potential use to be made of them. Those dedicated to the original purpose and message of the protest and Matt Stollerdefined that as well as anyone here will need to make resisting those efforts a top priority if they want to succeed.
Though the Tea Party was effectively annexed into the GOP, it did succeed in creating itself as a force within the Party which must be heeded and which cannot be entirely controlled by party leaders. Aaron Bady suggestedtoday that perhaps that's the best-case scenario to be realistically hoped for here: that these protests metastasize into a genuine protest movement that at least forces the Democratic Party to take heed, pay attention, and periodically make substantial concessions. That's a reasonable view, but the unique value and promise of these protests is that they are independent of prevailing political institutions, and it's difficult to see how these protests can simultaneously be fully integrated into those institutions while preserving that value.
The dynamics they are contesting are overwhelmingly systemic, not partisan. The call between Sorkin and his banking-CEO-friend that caused theNYT columnist to make his anthropological foray into the street jungle to report back on the discontented animals is a perfect symbol of the institutional forces that are the target of this unrest. Dedicating oneself principally to the Democratic Party's electoral prospects or Barack Obama's re-election campaign would seem a glaring non sequitur to those concerns.
UPDATE: Last week's NYT article scoffing at the protesters (that one by Ginia Bellafante) ended by noting what NYT editors apparently thought was the towering irony that some of the protesters use Apple computers; Sorkin here invokes the same trite mockery, ending his column with the piercing observation that he saw "two of them walking over to the A.T.M. at Bank of America." Apparently, you're not allowed to protest rampant criminality on Wall Street and the corruption of corporatist control of the political process unless you keep your money under your mattress and communicate by carrier pigeon at least not without incurring the derision of those wicked satirists at the NYT.
As usual, note that these brave, intrepid, watchdog journalists heap huge amounts of scorn on the most marginalized and powerless segments of the society, yet would never dare direct even a fraction of that mockery to those who wield power, such as Sorkin's "CEO of a major bank" friend. Modern establishment journalists have taken what should be the credo and mission of actual journalism afflict the powerful and comfort the powerless and completely reversed it (along those lines, note that Sorkin for no journalistic reason whatsoever and in violation of the NYTs own rules shields the identity of his CEO-of-a-major-bank friend with anonymity; is it not newsworthy that the CEO of a "major bank" fears the Wall Street protests?).
The Nations Jeremy Scahill, usually a harsh critic of establishment journalists, today decided to generously come to Sorkin's aid with this tweet:
I genuinely wonder whether Sorkin, before descending into the protesting hordes, donned one of those masks popularized in Asia at the height of the SARS epidemic. When visiting strange and exotic cultures, one can never be too careful. Is it any wonder that the severe economic suffering and anxiety pervading American society receives so little attention and concern from establishment media outlets and their stars?
Owners of Zuccotti Park Say Conditions Unsanitary From Wall Street Protests
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published October 07, 2011
Owners of New York City's Zuccotti Park may be starting to get fed up with it being occupied.
Brookfield Office properties, the firm that owns the central location for the Occupy Wall Street protests, has released a statement claiming that they have not been able to properly maintain the park and that sanitation has become a growing concern.
"Because many of the protestors refuse to cooperate by adhering to the [park] rules, the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th, and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels," said in a written statement by the property management firm.
Brookfield normally cleans and inspects the condition of the park every night which includes a power washing, landscaping, and trash removal. They haven't been able to do so since the protestors have sent up a tent city as part of the protests.
"Basic rules intended to keep the park safe, open, clean, and welcoming to all visitors are clearly posted," the statement from Brookfield reads. "These rules includes bans on the erection of tents or other structures, as well as the placement of tarps, sleeping bags, or other coverings on the property.
"Unfortunately, many of the individuals currently occupying the grounds are ignoring these basic yet necessary requirements, which interferes with the use of the park by others."
"#BrookfieldProps says they can't clean #LibertyPlaza. We'll share our brooms if they want 2 help," said one posting on the twitter feed @OccupyWallSt NYC.
Brookfield says that they recognize people's right to peacefully assemble but that they are also obligated to ensure that the park remains safe, clean and accessible to everyone.
"We continue to work with the City of New York to address these conditions and restore the park to its intended purpose," the statement continued.
In addition to the growing mess at the park, The NYPD has spent over $2 million in overtime to keep cops stationed at the protests, according to a public statement by Commissioner Ray Kelly made yesterday afternoon.
The NYPD did not immediately return requests for comment on Brookfield's statement. :finger:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
You can count on 100% infiltration by undercover finks whenever one challenges the system and power structure. I had an interesting 'event' in my life during the beginnings of the Anti-Vietnam movement. I went to the meeting of a new group on my University campus and after being there a short time, someone pointed to me and claimed I was an undercover agent. As it turned out the one who falsely fingered me was the undercover agent!!!!! :lol:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Topless women with signs requesting that gawkers not look at them but listen to them. I can't help but think that Karl Rove has outdone himself. They need to stop off at Wall Street, pick up their pay cheques for discrediting the movement, and then let the grown-ups take over. I agree. We are seeing a flood of paid operatives intent on giving the media excuses to ridicule the movement. This is yet another aged and obsolete stunt held over from COINTELPRO days. As a side note, I am getting a flood of emails (from email addresses I have never seen before; a dead giveaway right there) insisting that OccupyAMERICA is not a real grass roots movement but "Astroturf", meaning a fake manufactured front for a political agenda. But there is a really easy way to tell grassroots from astroturf. 20 people with professional printed signs in matching fonts in front of city hall with a lot of media coverage? Astroturf. Millions of Americans marching in every major city while the media tries not to notice? Grassroots. I'll let you make up your own minds, but the fact is that if either the Democrats or Republicans had the popular support to mount a record-setting mass movement across the land, there would be no need for a mass movement across the land. The other side is playing dirty, and it is only going to get worse.
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