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Banks, Pentagon and Academic Pusillanimousness
“I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy.”
—GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain
Not everything, mind you, but anything, which would put him on par with the dumbest American living under the heaviest and mossiest rock. Hell, he's running neck to neck with that boulder. Though Cain knows nothing, he has enough political sense to bluster, “If you mess with Israel you're messing with the United States of America.”
That’s been the mantra in Washington, Wall Street and Madison Avenue. Iran knows this as well, and that’s why it is, in all likelihood, trying to develop the nuclear bomb, not to strike New York or Washington, but Tel Aviv. It only makes sense, since that’s the only deterrence it has against an American invasion.
Clueless Cain thinks the Iranians have warships off our shore, but it’s America who has Iran surrounded, with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Fifth Fleet also operates from Bahrain, a mere 120 miles from the Iranian coast. Washington has been itching for a fight with Iran ever since it had the (Muslim) balls to depose the CIA-installed Shah and kept 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran is also the largest Islamic country to openly defy the United States. By the way, it also has a lot of oil and natural gas.
Threatened for three decades by the biggest empire on earth, what can Iran do but strive to aim a nuclear warhead at Israel? You mess with us, we’ll kill your daddy!
A few days ago, I was a guest on Iran’s Press TV to talk about the anti-Wall Street protest. On the same show was Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. A year after his book came out, Kovel was fired from Bard College. Seeing a causal effect, Kovel issued a statement charging that he was terminated because of “differences between [himself] and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism.” At that time, I was teaching creative writing at Bard, so I tried to drag this controversy onto its listserv, but no one, absolutely no one, responded, to my astonishment. Hey, a college teaching job isn’t easy to come by, so why rock the boat? President Botstein will kick your ass. A few months earlier, the same listserv was orgasmic with cheering for Obama, but, then again, nearly all of the American left were. Ah, how idyllic and delightful it is to be a tenured liberal in the waning days of empire!
2011, at another supposedly radical bastion, Berkeley, cops wacked students with the chancellor’s approval. Protesting outrageous tuition hikes, these students correctly blamed banks for their university’s and state’s budget crises, but banks and universities have been in cahoots for a long time now. Schools jack up rates, knowing they can send students to banks for loans, but no matter what one’s major these days, the jobs are simply not there, but one’s debts are, for life!
Is it a surprise, then, that so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are recent college graduates? Spat out by the system, they know that they’ve been had. Like investment banks, American colleges are also purveyors of ponzi schemes. Beaten to the ground, flattened, these protesters are suspicious of all hierarchies, of all pyramids, and that’s why they’ve refused to elevate leaders or even to prioritize key issues, but these reluctances must be overcome, I think, for this movement to move forward.
Its success, so far, can be attributed to two crucial decisions, to have an open-ended occupation, not a one-day march, and to target Wall Street. This movement, then, is about the looting and corruption of the money manipulators, so it’s important that the public be educated and constantly reminded about the abuses of the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the rest of the banking cartel.
As Americans endure actual or symbolic homelessness across this land, their government is hankering for yet another war. To distract attention from problems at home, the US wants to attack Iran and/or Syria. This is madness, certainly, but not to the war profiteers. Having bought off all of our politicians, these money masters own the Pentagon and its obscene budget that eats up half of our tax money.
When Michael Avery of Suffolk University pointed out, in a leaked email, that it was irrational to support troops sent overseas by a war-prone country to kill, he was met with considerable abuse and hostility. Unsurprisingly, his school’s president quickly distanced himself from Avery’s lucid remarks by saying that he himself was sending a care package to the troops. So, yes, if you don’t die by the time this box arrives, have a bar of chocolate on me!
How can anyone in his right mind not be against corruption, since corruption is just stealing public money, but unfortunately, many of the 99% are still misled into supporting our military. They cannot see that the Pentagon, like the banks, is also a nexus of corruption, that its main task is not to defend our republic but to funnel money from the 99% to the 1%.
- Posted in
29 Comments so far
Show AllIf only the president of Suffolk University would have the common sense to send a care package to those Afghans and Pakistanis who have been torn asunder by our brave and heroic troops.
how true and still the sheeple sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is a 2010 book by the political journalist Matt Taibbi about the events that led to the financial crisis of 2008.
It argues that the crisis was not an accident of the free market but the result of a complex and on-going politico-financial process taking place in the United States whereby wealth and power is transferred to a super-rich "grifter class" that holds a grip on the political process. The book has been described as a "necessary ... corrective" of the assertion that bubbles are inevitable in the market system[1], and contests the notion that the greed of the American consumer was a primary cause of the problem.[2]
Taibbi maintains that “all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a tiny oligarchy of extremely clever criminals and their castrato henchmen in government.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griftopia
paul craig roberts reviewed griftopia
"Matt Taibbi is the best—certainly the most entertaining—financial/political reporter in the country. There is no better book than Griftopia [1] (2010) to which to turn to understand how stupidity, greed, and criminality, spread evenly among policymakers and Wall Street, created the financial crisis that has left Americans overburdened with both private and public debt. Taibbi walks the reader through the fraudulent financial instruments that littered the American, British, and European financial communities with toxic waste. He has figured it all out, and what in other hands might be an arcane account for MBAs is in Taibbi's hands a highly readable and entertaining story."
http://www.vdare.com/print/13156
linh writes: "Is it a surprise, then, that so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are recent college graduates? Spat out by the system"
listen to george carlin:
"The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago."
me, i'm with occupy all the way - what say you
I say yes, medmedude.
George Carlin, high school dropout, got the concept of schooling in Amerika better than most PhDs. Those more schooled have to do a lot of unthinking, and of those that rest their ego on their degrees, few will admit that they’ve been misled.
A lot of marginalized critics of our schooling point to the fact that the trivium needs to return as the foundation of education. (Funny, when my Word document underlined “trivium”as a misspelling it suggested “trivial,” and when I chose “look up” it demurred and defined trivium as “less important liberal arts” and in medieval study, “Less important than the other four,” meaning arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music. What is and isn’t in the Word dictionary, and how it defines words, strikes me as very telling of our pedestrian sense of what it means to be educated.)
The trivium is grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and to consider these “less important” to other fields of study belies the pure rot of our schooling principles. Marginalizing them—or in many cases ignoring them altogether—cuts thinking off at the knees. How can anybody assess a political stance, let alone any theory, without the trivium as a foundation? Yet these fields are absent in most secondary schools, and optional in most college ones. True, many college teachers will attempt to fold logic and rhetoric into their disciplines (although many will not), but it seems to me that a political science degree would certainly require them in their foundation classes. I looked up requirements at the state university where I teach for a political science major, and found them lacking.
Only the elite, private schools retain them, from their $40,000 a year kindergartens on up. As Woodrow Wilson explained when he was president of Princeton in 1909, "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
The rot started long ago, when post-Civil War Amerika opened university education to a greater percentage of the populace, the formerly “unwashed masses,” and took a “scientific” approach to teaching that emphasized filling the students’ heads with theories and having them learn, usually uncritically, how other thinkers reached their conclusions. The thinking was that so much thinking had to be absorbed that there was no time or need for students to learn how to connect their own dots.
Like Griftopia, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine confirms the strategy behind contrived bubbles and crisis.
Written prior to the 2008 meltdown, Shock Doctrine was ahead of the curve. We are now witnessing serial evidence of the grifters' shock doctrine in action...austerity in Greece, Italy, now Spain...contrived US deficit ceiling "debate" in July that resulted in US Senators getting record numbers of panic contacts from constituents, and this week Obama's super secret catfood committee gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic programs to allegedly solve a non-existent debt crisis.
Don't get me wrong, I admire Matt Taibbi's work and must confess that I have not read this book, yet, but
1. "the crisis was not an accident of the free market but the result of a complex and on-going politico-financial process taking place in the United States whereby wealth and power is transferred to a super-rich "grifter class" that holds a grip on the political process" Without a deregulated free market, the "grifter class" would not have been able to transfer the wealth of labor & nature into power at such super-turbo speed, although I am not discounting their lobbying benefits. With deregulation, there are no laws to enforce to disincentivize fraud and thus the crisis and bailouts (public debt).
2. The so-called "necessary ... corrective" of the assertion that bubbles are inevitable in the market system" Is this a denial of the fact that monetary policies to expand/tighten the money supply are not reflected in the booms and busts of the business cycles and/or economic crisis?
3. I agree that "stupidity, greed, and criminality, spread evenly among policymakers and Wall Street, created the financial crisis that has left Americans overburdened with both private and public debt." and also read paul craig roberts' articles on his site. However, we must understand that "Finance capitalism has become a network of exponentially growing interest-bearing claims wrapped around the production economy. The internal contradiction is that its dynamic leads to debt deflation and asset stripping. The economy is turned into a Ponzi scheme by recycling debt service to make new loans to inflate property prices by enough to justify yet new lending. But a limit is imposed by the shrinking ability of surplus income to cover the debt service falling due. That is what the mathematics of compound interest are all about." http://michael-hudson.com/2010/07/from-marx-to-goldman-sachs-the-fictions-of-fictitious-capital1/
Thanks for the the George Carlin quote...reminds me of another book I'm currently reading - Lincoln Steffen's "The Shame of the Cities"
Yes the 1%, massively overrepresented by Zionists, hugely benefit from the corruption at the pentagon and the banks and the universities. It is little wonder that they always try to put the kibosh on logical and rational thinking.
Israel is a parasite on the USA which has many moles here orchestrating the leaching of the US's blood and treasure for the benefit of Israel.
The thesis mentor of Ben Shalom Bernanke of the Federal Reserve was Fischer, the current head of the Israeli central bank (he gets invited to their central banking august fun and games every year). Amazingly, while Bernanke works overtime to bankrupt the US, Fischer has miraculously managed to keep Israel DEBT FREE!
It's time for some sedition laws in every country with rich Zionists moles supporting Israeli fascism so Israel stops being a stumbling block to all nations. Just because the book of Isaiah in the Torah foretold this condition doesn't mean that it has to be a permanent condition. It's time to stop this arrogance and warlike talk from Israel always threatening to do a Sampson option if they don't get what they want.
Israel needs regime change NOW! Until then, supporters of this fascist regime need JAIL and asset stripping.
Either that or Israel AND the US go the way of the dodo. How much longer do you you think the Germans are going to keep getting cowed with the WWII guilt trip? Do you think China or Russia will not make an alliance with Germany to castrate US and Israeli aggression against Iran? Look at the support for Palestine in the UN. The writing is on the wall.
The US is on the the wrong side of, not just human history, but NATURAL history. Almost every single policy on the environment and foreign policy is bankrupt.
But first we must rid ourselves of the zionist parasite. Ironically, shaking off Zionist influence may be the only way that Israel can survive because it will force them to jail their fascist nut balls and become peaceful.
[It seems the Israel lobby has not always been held in such high esteem within the White House. The AP reports on newly released documents regarding lobbying in the early 1970s on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union:
A White House official, Leonard Garment, saying he was flooded with letters and phone calls with Jewish appeals, asked Kissinger for help and guidance. The late Alexander Haig, Nixon's national security adviser, sent him Mrs. Meir's letter and said "We will have to consider the best means by which to proceed."
According to transcripts released by the State Department, Kissinger, who was Haig's deputy, said to Garment: "Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?" Kissinger is Jewish.
Garment, also Jewish, replied: "None in the world."]
Full article here:
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/11/kissinger-is-there-a-more-self-serving-group-of-people-than-the-jewish-community.html
Great comment. I too have noticed how many people in powerful positions here are Jewish.
And I am tired of them using the Holocaust as their reason to murder and commit atrocities all over the World. Yes it was bad. But what the US did to Native Americans, Blacks, and people around the World is just as bad!
Kissinger. One of the most EVIL person ever.
And a great point. Stop supporting the troops who rape and plunder for the one percent!
Zionism is religion, born of Jewish and Christian faith and tradition. Given our own good sense and our founders' clear warnings about the perils of mixing government and religion, it's astonishing to witness the extent to which American secular governance has been subverted: to the point where no high official can ever be elected who does not first offer allegiance to the concept of Zionism and the State of Israel.
Linh Dinh never disappoints as he spells out the obvious in an easy to understand format. Particularly depressing (though not new) is the absence of enlightened deans at our universities. The ideology of the right has been prevalent in almost every American university for quite some time.
I was also singled out at my Law School in 2001 after I opined that attacking Afghanistan after 9/11 may not be the best response. Unfortunately expressing empathy for any of corporate America's enemies can be hazardous to your academic career. Academia is a target of corporate America as the Koch brothers and others try to undermine critical thinking, opposing views and anti-corporate views that may arise out of our institutions of higher learning. The old mantra that everyone needs a higher education to succeed has proven to be another 'ponzi scheme' as Linh Dinh notes. Most graduates of university now suffer from no employment opportunities and outrageous student debt, yet no Democratic or Republican candidate has suggested eliminating high tuition costs, erasing student loan debts or creating government sponsored jobs for all of our graduates.
Recently while visiting Italy, my nephew expressed interest in attending the University of Toronto for his physics degree. He asked about the cost of tuition for one year. I explained that it would cost around $6,500 USD a year feeling proud about the fact that Canadian tuition costs were far below those of their neighbor to the south. Yet my nephew was flabbergasted and responded by saying... "I can't believe that Canada charges so much to go to university!" I had to ask him how much Italians pay. He explained that it was around $1,000 a year but nothing at all if the applicant was genuinely poor.
The logical response by a government 'for the people' would be to provide full employment to the millions who have sacrificed so much to achieve a higher education. Of course the option of joining the army to suppress self-determination around the world is still a viable option to pay off your school debt, but then your soul is sacrificed in the process.
Thanks for helping Linh Dinh to debunk the notion that universities are bastions of free thought, vacuum sealed against the think tanks and other forms of political influence.
So where does one go to be educated? Follow Zappa's advice: “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
Many tell me that you can get laid outside of college, by the way. But if you want your mind fucked with in the name of higher learning, college is definitely the place to go. And if you have to take out loans to get that ballyhoed degree, they'll fuck with your finances too, as the young of OWS are telling this stupid country.
It's worth recalling here that in Colorado, they all but ran Ward Churchill out of town on a rail after his indelicate reference to the "little Eichmanns" occupying the WTC suites was publicized after September 11, 2001.
And while the mob closed in, they were accompanied by a Greek chorus including progressive-liberals who insisted that Churchill was not a suitable person to defend against the scurrilous and ultimately successful attempt to unseat him from a tenured position.
His scholarship really WAS shoddy and indefensible, they superciliously explained. The fact that it took the "little Eichmanns" controversy to expose Churchill's alleged heinous inadequacy didn't faze those who found Churchill too icky to support for a second.
Yet, none of the people who blithely insisted that despite appearances and the unfortunate circumstances, Churchill pretty much got what was coming to him seem too worried about scholars like John Yoo and a host of others being regarded as academics in good standing.
Good point, Obedient Servant.
If one reads Churchill's writings, and has a sufficient knowledge of American Indian cultures there is far more to agree with than not. Churchill is unafraid to tackle controversial issues most often with pointed precision. I personally find hope in Churchill's writings because of it's truthfulness and searing confrontation with American hubris. There is far more to like in Churchill than in his detractors. Christian Americans are directly responsible for the Great American Genocide in which an estimated 112 million American Indians lost their lives, land, and resources for which no recognition much less apology has been uttered. Life is circular in nature and American's have much to account for. What American's are facing in their near future is unfortunately ripe with threats beyond your imaginations. Properly understood the world of Spirit is unutterably powerful.
The US Military is the greatest threat to freedoms and liberties in that Country today. We have people that continually claim they served in that Military to defend freedom and ensure citizens of the United States do not have to speak Russian or Chinese.
This is absolute nonsense. The only language they are defending is "Capitalese" and the rights of Capital and those that control it to make even more money. The only thing they are defending is the bottom line profits of the Corporations and the Fascist State.
They do this by attacking the poorest people of the world and stealing their resources and by destabilizing regimes of the people the world over.
It has not changed one whit from the times of Smedley Butler. Were it not for the Military citizens of the United States of America would have more freedoms and liberties.
Far from speaking Chinese , they would be speaking the language of working people all over the world and the language of people and of community rather then of Money and the Capitalists.
Given its Geographical location and its size and the nature of its neighbours the USA can easily to defend its territory from attack with 60 billion a year spent on its military.
" Many of the 99% are still mislead into supporting our military. They cannot see that its main task is not to defend our republic but to funnel money from the 99% to the 1%". Yes Mr. Lindh, like I have said for a long time, the BS that the military is defending the 99% and our freedoms and democracy, is propaganda put out by the 1% so they can keep on screwing the 99%! But alas, sooo many brainwashed sheeple!
OMFG:
"Not everything, mind you, but anything, which would put him on par with the dumbest American living under the heaviest and mossiest rock"
I didn't stop laughing long enough to finish the article. I came straight here to say that is the funniest fucking line I probably heard this year.
Thanks for that.
Now back to reading the article!
Except that there are at least a couple hundred million Americans sharing that space under that heaviest and mossiest rock. And I'm counting only the adults.
Thank you, Linh Dinh. In our evil era, with evil spirits corrupting governments, you are an angel shining some light in the darkness. But the momentum towards destruction and deathfulness seems unstoppable. At the very moment in history, when the world needs leadership to muster our remaining resources to cope with climate change and declining petroleum, we are led by evil idiots addicted to re-enacting 19th century racist wars of conquest, using 21st century weapons.
"Beaten to the ground, flattened, these protesters are suspicious of all hierarchies, of all pyramids, and that’s why they’ve refused to elevate leaders or even to prioritize key issues, but these reluctances must be overcome, I think, for this movement to move forward."
Linh Dinh too is stuck in the 20th Century. Why so many otherwise good thinkers fail to comprehend the architecture of change in the 21st Century is a mystery. Perhaps it is lack of education.
____________________________________________
The fundamental difference between 20th Century change and 21st Century change lies in the ARCHITECTURE of change.
Change in the 20th Century was CENTRALIZED. It is represented by a triangle where power rests in the hands of the few at the top, and was dictated downward to the People.
Change in the 21st Century is DECENTRALIZED. It is represented by an inverted triangle where power rests with the people at the top.
The architecture if the Internet is one of DECENTRALIZATION. Now, each participating Citizen is a potential publisher and participant. The DECENTRALIZED change process is vitalized by free and open communication in all directions by the participants. A VISION results from the free and open communication when the majority of the participants adopt an idea or concept in their minds and hearts. VISIONS are FLUID and will change as the minds of people evolve and change.
The speed of change spikes complexity. CENTRALIZED entities lack the numbers of intellectual talent (people) to compete with DECENTRALIZED intellectual talent (people) when making decisions. In hyper-culture CENTRALIZED decision making breaks down and fails, whereas, DECENTRALIZED decision making brings order out of chaos. The fundamental difference lies in the great numbers of people participating and sharing their ideas and beliefs. From this pool of ideas, the best ideas take flight and are adopted by the majority of participants.
The OCCUPY Movement is deeply decentralized and EVERY PARTICIPANT IS A LEADER. This process is highly useful when attempting to change or TRANSCEND the status quo. If one leader is isolated or eliminated by the status quo it has little effect because each person is a leader and each person has adopted the vision, so the Movement continues.
Another advantage of a decentralized movement is that it is strongly resistant to co-option. This is important. Political organizations or infiltrators have little effect on the movement once the vision is widely understood and shared by the participants. The adoption of a firm understanding and belief in the DECENTRALIZED PROCESS is first necessary to obtain the resistant nature required for successful transcendence of the current corrupt system.
A vision developed by the majority of people will survive traditional attempts to derail it. The participation of ORGANIZATIONS should be avoided, BUT individual participation encouraged.
Goals are a centralized decision making process. Visions are more complex and result from decentralized decision making. Many people feel that the current governmental and economic systems are so corrupt as to be unchangeable. Decentralized change can TRANSCEND the current system and establish a new system, and new pathways to better lifeways. One good example of this is the concept of sustainable living. Decentralized decisions will develop a new MYTHOS, a way of confronting the world as it is and developing NEW lifeways from it.
No one yet knows the shape of the future. What is sure IS the pathway to that future. It is in the process being envisioned by widely decentralized cooperating participating Citizens. As visions are developed and implemented, the old will be transcended as the visions take hold. WE ARE ON THE PATHWAY OF INVENTING THE FUTURE, A FUTURE THAT WILL UNVEIL ITSELF AS WE PROCEED. “ TRUST THE PROCESS.”
Finally, this is not a POLITICAL movement to be used by the media or political parties to divide us. This revolution derives from a deeper place in our minds, hearts, and spirits. Everyone is welcome to participate in this Movement and the greater the participation, the more meaningful and balanced will be the results. Seek to act with non-violence and unity as the system is transcended
______________________________
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Excellent analysis, Stone. Very, very well said. Thank you for that. These consistent attempts to push Occupy into 'leaders' is a massive attempt to find someone to corrupt.
I have noticed many times that whatever defines the type of movement that topples a dictatorship or unjust regime, those same things (positive and negative) will define what replaces the old structure. Not to say that there will not be some important improvements along the way, such as alleviating hunger or getting rid of a colonial owner. But ultimately, you will get something that resembles what you have built. Therefore, I am heartened by OWS insistence on decentralized, non-violent, inclusive, creative, and consensus based movement based on individual and group responsibility. Nothing is easy, or automatic, or pure, but I believe that is the way to go.
Building a new model of decentralized society...
Hmm. Isn't that a paradox?
Or is it just a poor choice of words?
The new model still has infrastructure and unified group effort addressing social issues in government, business and the environment. The difference is the ABSENCE of gatekeepers that rip off the 99% while pretending to be serving them. This difference is key because the motive for wars, dirty energy schemes with externalized costs (shitting on the environment and the 99%) no longer exists. Consequently, society moves towards genuine solutions rather than short term, people killing and/or planet killing profit scams.
Here's a latest headline to contemplate: "The U.S. and its allies are shifting their efforts to constrict Syrian President Assad's remaining financial lifelines, focusing on ties to Lebanon banks" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204517204577046540214639250.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews
Now there is a new meaning to 'letting the genii out of the bottle'. It can now be said, unequivocally, that the psychopaths have been 'let out of the bottle'. Getting them back in will take extraordinary measures. And it isn't like the psychopaths haven't been around, it is that now too many people look at having a 'decent' life, as one doesn't at all have to worry about what he/she does to others to get that 'decent' life. Meaning a person with no conscience, is bankrupt of moral integrity and an excellent actor/liar is the new norm. I just wonder when the appropriate measures for dealing with psychopaths will go into effect.
GWNorth, medmedude and George Carlin (in medmedude's post) are totally on the money.
The U.S. military has been the servant of the greatest criminal class in history for decades now. Nothing to do with defense any more.
A reminder: the territory of the continental United States suffered short lived and benign invasions by uniformed soldiers on basically three occasions since its inception (there were a few other incidents during the early 19th century barely worth mentioning):
in 1814, there took place an invasion of Washington DC by the United Kingdom;
in 1863, there was an invasion by the Confederate States; and
in 1916, Pancho Villa briefly entered United States territory.
but but but . . . Botstein is such a dreeeeeammmmy orchestra conductor!
the word is "pusillanimity", even in acadamia.
Maybe it's a good thing that there isn't a "leader" of the OWS movement.
------------------------------
Leaders of peaceful movements are usually assassinated.
Ghandi
Lennon
MLK
JFK
RFK
Jesus.....