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Today's Top News
Occupy Wall Street Has Been Battling the Cops; Now the Free Marketeers Take Their Shot
By its actions, Occupy Wall Street is puncturing myths like these:
l. The Myth that direct action against the center of financial power can’t be sustained.
2. The Myth that New York City is a bastion of liberalism and tolerance with its Mayor from Wall Street and its cops recipients of a well timed $4.6 million dollar donation from JP Morgan Chase whose bank up the street from the protest is guarded by -- no guess needed-- officers of the NYPD. 
The cops have a monopoly in this game, a monopoly on force -- and use it. (photo: Adrian Kinloch)
3. The Myth that police violence only happens in other countries, not in the Big Apple where we are far too sophisticated to have a police department lead/encourage hundreds of protesters to cross a bridge via its roadway and then conveniently have buses and reinforcements on the other side to scoop them up.
They turned a bridge to Brooklyn into a bridge to jail without anyone having to pass GO or collect $200 as you would in a Monopoly game. The cops have a monopoly in this game, a monopoly on force -- and use it.
4. The Myth that people of different political persuasions -- Democrats, Socialists, and even Ron Paul libertarians can’t make common cause and eat donated pizza together in a public park to take a stand together against abuses by the 1% of the elite against 99% of the people.
But now, conservatives in the name of the free market, baiting activists as uninformed and seeking to discredit what they are doing, are opening a new assault, an ideological attack.
Leading the charge is a website called The Daily Bell, ringing a pro-capitalist mantra to put down the protest. It's been promoted by the Drudge Report and other right-leaning outlets
Unlike much of the media that at first ignored the protests and then ridiculed it, they take a more patronizing approach:
The charge:
“Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very "solutions" that are part of the financial elite's agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government. – Prison Planet lede via Drudge Report
Dominant Social Theme: It's all Wall Street's fault. Government needs to write (SIC: RIGHT!) the wrongs of capitalism.”
Never mind that no one at the protests has said this, and that their General Assembly has yet to agree on remedies to their protest that focuses on corporate abuses, aided and abetted by Wall Street firms and their allies in real estate and insurance.
Instead, their accusers hammer protesters for things they believe they will say, not what they have said.
These “pinheads,” to use a Bill O’Reillyism, who defend the abstraction of a free market don’t let the facts get in the way of how we got into this mess.
They see the world as business-good versus government-bad, despite all the contradictions of government subsidies and bailouts of financial institutions that effectively collapsed thanks to their own fraudulent practices and the greed of those that run them, and, who have never seen an outrageous compensation package or over-sized bonus they would reject.
Never mind that Ayn Rand supporter and former Fed head Alan Greenspan’s admitted that fraud was pervasive in the lead-up to the financial collapse.
Never mind that it was Republican and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson who first initiated the $700 billion TARP bailout of the big banks in 2007, and another Republican and original Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke, who secretly printed up trillions of dollars to spread like manna from heaven on banksters worldwide.
Never mind that many of the government remedies that the right denounce came about because of the predatory lending and racially discriminatory practices that “red-lined” minority communities in the late eighties and early 90’s denying homes to people of color.
The Daily Bell of its day and its cohorts were not ringing their bells to expose blatant racism that distorted their beloved markets then, or massive financial crimes that do so today. They were saying nothing about this, then or now.
These ideologues are too smart to totally deny that Wall Street MAY be part of the problem.
“Of course,” The Daily Bell whines, “Wall Street is PART of the problem, but it's a much larger problem, and Wall Street is ultimately, for the most part, a transactional mechanism. The issues of failing Western regulatory democracies and their eroding money stuff cannot simply be laid at the feet of the securities business, no matter how powerful it seems. The real controllers are to be seen elsewhere.
In the past these controllers have been able to effectively disguise their presence and influence. They do it by misdirection and by using money power to blame the private sector for the depredations of the West's central banking economy. The mainstream media is extremely important to this effort …”
So now we have the corporate media in which all the largest companies in America advertise and back the economic elite being blamed for discrediting the business order.
What world are these people living in? Even in Austria, the apparent and mythic homeland of their beloved economics school, no one buys this claptrap.
“Now Occupy Wall Street – evidently and obviously a dialectical enterprise funded by these same elites (at least in part) – is giving them a moment of hope..." they imagine.
“Evidently and obviously” are words that evidently and obviously need no evidence to back them up with anything approaching facts in this faith-based world.
They justify this faux attack, finally, if you can work your way to the end of the dense diatribe, with these words, “It is not bankers who have immense power, but central bankers and their controllers, the elite Anglosphere families that run central banking and distribute its tens of trillions of "money created from nothing."
This masked reference to unnamed “Anglosphere families” smacks of the phrasing of that anti-Semitic tract, the Protocols of Zion without mentioning any chosen people or whom they are alluding to, of course.
It also doesn’t mention that our Central bank, the Federal Reserve, is privately owned, not a government institution, run by the banks and for the banks. Most people don’t know this, of course despite Ron Paul’s efforts joined in by some Democrats to explain it.
(If only that left wing run but right wing serving big media would do its job!)
Occupy Wall Street’s inter-denominational, inter-generational, activist army of diverse democracy promoters are still in the park they have liberated for now and are ringing their own bells.
- Posted in
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Show AllAt this rate, the OWSers will be faulted for causing the housing bubble, the collapse of which triggered the Great Recession (to the amazement of the Fed and virtually every "serious" economist). And then 9/11.....
No, many serious economists warned of the housing bubble but were ignored and never given a fair hearing in the corporate media. Dean Baker was a prominent "Cassandra".
"It also doesn’t mention that our Central bank, the Federal Reserve, is privately owned, not a government institution, run by the banks and for the banks. Most people don’t know this, of course despite Ron Paul’s efforts joined in by some Democrats to explain it."
Where did you get this idea? No, the Federal Reserve is a government entity with a few private components, but is answerable to the President, who appoints its chaiman, and to Congress. The Fed doesn't answer to the banks and only to the banks (unless its leadership decides to do this). The Fed's purpose is to aid in gov't's efforts to avoid either inflation or deflation. It also ensures the security of OUR funds held in banks and credit unions. If the Fed is failing in this mission, it is not because of its nature as an institution but because of the nature of the human beings who run it, their ties to banksters and corporate power, their venality and their greed.
From Wikipedia (unless you think that is a corporate media bullhorn - it's not):
"The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve, and informally as the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics, particularly a severe panic in 1907.[2][3][4] Over time, the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System have expanded and its structure has evolved.[3][5] Events such as the Great Depression were major factors leading to changes in the system.[6] Its duties today, according to official Federal Reserve documentation, are to conduct the nation's monetary policy, supervise and regulate banking institutions, maintain the stability of the financial system and provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions.[7]
The Federal Reserve Board (FRB) was created December 23, 1913. It consists of seven members of the Board of Governors and divides the country into twelve districts with a Reserve Bank for each district. The job of this bureaucracy is to maintain employment, keep prices stable, and keep interest rates low by regulating monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Board also supervises banks, provides financial services, and researches the United States economy and the economies in the surrounding region.
The Federal Reserve System's structure is composed of the presidentially appointed Board of Governors (or Federal Reserve Board), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous privately owned U.S. member banks and various advisory councils.[8][9][10] The FOMC is the committee responsible for setting monetary policy and consists of all seven members of the Board of Governors and the twelve regional bank presidents, though only five bank presidents vote at any given time. The Federal Reserve System has both private and public components, and was designed to serve the interests of both the general public and private bankers. The result is a structure that is considered unique among central banks. It is also unusual in that an entity outside of the central bank, namely the United States Department of the Treasury, creates the currency used.[11]
According to the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve is independent within government in that "its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government." However, its authority is derived from the U.S. Congress and is subject to congressional oversight. Additionally, the members of the Board of Governors, including its chairman and vice-chairman, are chosen by the President and confirmed by Congress. The government also exercises some control over the Federal Reserve by appointing and setting the salaries of the system's highest-level employees. Thus the Federal Reserve has both private and public aspects.[12][13][14][15] The U.S. Government receives all of the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained. In 2010, the Federal Reserve made a profit of $82 billion and transferred $79 billion to the U.S. Treasury.[16]"
Not just Treasury - the Fed also has a revolving personnel door with the banks. And "formal" linkage doesnt really matter. The whole thing is a close knit cartel and fraternity - they have bonds between them that go back to the elite prep schools and universities they all attend, the same country clubs and the fact that many of the top elites sit on the boards of many corporations - called interlocking directorships.
Let's get one thing straight once and for freakin all: Big Business and Big Government are a partnership and Big Business is the SENIOR partner. Money rules. Why do you think they call Goldman "Government Sachs?"
Link, please? Try this - your response?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve_bank
In Lewis v. United States,[3] the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." The opinion went on to say, however, that: "The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes." Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,[2] in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally-created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency.
double post
Republican redneck loudmouth ignorant cops vs the working class of America.
>>"But now, conservatives in the name of the free market, baiting activists as uninformed and seeking to discredit what they are doing, are opening a new assault, an ideological attack."<<
Yes, the baiting and hit jobs have started. The first example mentioned here is a video report by Adam Kokesh ("Adam vs. The Man"), trying to dump his libertarian views on to the protesters. It comes out as totally unfair, as he thrusts his mic so close to their faces and draws it back to launch into his own shtick while the girl is trying to say something. The effect is that you can see her lips moving, but there's no sound, and when she talks you can hear only part of the sentences.
So what if one protester says she would vote for Obama and is not so knowledgeable about Afghanistan? She is there to protest about the crushing burden of student loans. And then he asks everyone if they would support impeaching Obama.
It's clear what his motive is: he is NOT there to listen to what the protesters have to say. He is there to make them look silly and to play mind games with them - and looks like he failed.
Notice that this video report is promoted via Alex Jones's website:
www.infowars.com/occupy-wall-street-protesters-call-totalitarian-government-re-election-of-obama/
The write-up is by Paul Joseph Watson, a British lad and a regular on Alex Jones's site. Here he is, dishing out his wisdom dripping with snobbery:
>>"The ignorance displayed in these interviews knows no bounds. The protesters just don’t get it. They are calling for the government to use force to impose their ideas, all in the name of bringing down corporations who they don’t realize have completely bought off government regulators. Corporations and government enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship – getting one to regulate the other is asinine and only hurts smaller businesses who are legitimately trying to compete in a free market economy that barely exists."<<
So it's going to be harder and harder for the people protesting as the protests will come under attack, slander, ridicule, attempts to be co-opted, hijacked, not to mention police brutality. There will be talk of conspiracy that could be difficult to prove or disprove. The issues may get sidetracked. Even Danny Schechter here inexplicably feels the need to counter the mention of "central bankers and their controllers" as possibly anti-Semitic. The noise and confusion may increase in the days to come.
While some of the people protesting may not be able to express their views coherently when all of a sudden somebody thrusts a microphone in their face, it is clear that these people are genuine. I hope their fledgling efforts do not go to waste and I hope they do not get disillusioned with activism.
Use the system we have, to fix the system we have... and demand one simple law: make it a misdemeanor NOT to vote in federal elections.