See the comment left on the post below this one:
Anonymous said...
Oh yes..pimping teenage girls, public masturbation, defecatig on police cars,.. They are definitely your kind of people. You all can go to hell!
To dispel such misinformed brutish and superstitious beliefs, from Brad Blog:
Occupy Wall Street is No 'Tea Party'
Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning
While both phenomena --- Occupy Wall Street and the "Tea Party" --- have emerged at a time of acute economic distress and a sense of alienation, disenchantment and betrayal brought on by an increasingly authoritarian corporate capitalism, they are as different as night is to day.
Occupy Wall Street is a genuine, organic, knowledge-driven democratic uprising. Its source, as perceptively described by Ben Manski, Executive Director of the Liberty Tree Foundation, is to be found in a profound "contradiction." "The promise of the Unites States is democracy," he writes, yet "The reality is that corporate elites rule."
The American "promise" is embodied in the lofty, egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence, in the recognition provided by the U.S. Constitution that the purpose of government is to "promote the general welfare," and in the concept inscribed above the portico of the U.S. Supreme Court --- "EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW." The "reality," as noted by former New York Times reporter, Chris Hedges, is that political power in the U.S. has been seized by a "criminal class" of rapacious oligarchs, whose radical goal is not merely the ability to carry out their criminal pillage of the economy and the environment with impunity, but the decimation of "all impediments to the creation of a neo-feudalistic corporate state."
The goal of Occupy Wall Street, Manski observes, is "to make the promise the new reality." It is, in that sense, a broader movement than both the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, for it is not limited to a rejection of Jim Crow and imperial conquest, but a total rejection of the authoritarian corporate security state that the rapacious oligarchs have erected.
Like the occupiers, the indoctrinated followers of the "Tea Party" are experiencing a profound sense of fear, alienation and betrayal. But what the latter do not realize is that theirs is a misdirected anger --- the product of an Orwellian manipulation by the same reactionary billionaires (aka "economic royalists" per FDR) who, in reality, are the source of their economic insecurity and political oppression.
But, before exploring the Orwellian manipulations of billionaire sociopaths, let's examine the underlying political and economic conditions that have given rise to Occupy Wall Street...
Rise of the 1%
[...] The gap between shares of new wealth between the top one percent and the bottom ninety, now nearly identical to that which precipitated the Great Depression, is even greater when the measurement is taken within the context of a global economy.
Last year, in our piece on "Savage Capitalism", we covered author and Canadian citizen advocate Maude Barlow's assessment that "the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history." Barlow stated:
The richest 2% own more than half the household wealth in the world. The richest 10% hold 85% of total global assets and the bottom half of humanity owns less than 1% of the wealth in the world. The three richest men in the world have more money than the poorest 48 countries.
Vast numbers of Americans are experiencing levels of economic hardships not seen since the Great Depression.
Not only have middle-class wages stagnated and fallen, but, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, real unemployment rose to 16.5% in September --- more than 25 million people.
One out of every six Americans lives in poverty. Per the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "14.5% of American households suffered from food insecurity in 2010." For minorities, the number is much higher --- "25 percent of African-American households and 26 percent of Hispanic households."
"59 million Americans had no health insurance for at least part of 2010, an increase of 4 million from the previous year." According to a Harvard University Study, 45,000 Americans die each year simply because they cannot afford healthcare insurance --- 45,000 in addition to the still uncounted numbers who die when carriers refuse to authorize vital procedures.
Meanwhile, corporate profits have soared to "their highest level in history." Over the past year, the 400 wealthiest Americans experienced a 12% increase in their net worth to $1.5 trillion. In the two year period, 2009 to 2011, the fortunes of Charles and David Koch increased by more than 70% from $17 billion each to $25 billion each, tying them each for fourth on the Forbes 400, behind Bill Gates, $59 billion, Warren Buffett, $39 billion and Larry Ellison, $33 billion.
[... links omitted. But the text is very well documented. That's enough excerpting. Read the rest --- with links, again, here, from Brad Blog]
READ IT ALL. FOLLOW THE LINKS. The facts are stark. But undeniable. It is intentional and it is being imposed top down. Any cogent person looking at the facts proving the decay of America and the American Dream has cause to feel dissatisfaction. Except for the 1%. They're keen on keeping their status quo. And they own the politicians and run the show. They will be as extreme and ruthless that way as Bashar Assad. If needed. Expect more of the Occupy Oakland brutality if the Occupy movement lasts out the winter without withering or eviction and repression, with the press turning its subservient blind eye. Anyone doubting this, either disprove the facts, or offer a more reliable explanation/scenario.
NOTE: Anyone wishing to write a cogent and reasoned guest editorial from the other side is invited to submit text to the sidebar address. Obviously, garbage of the quality of the anonymous comment noted at the start of this post will not be published, that comment being allowed only as an example of the nature and worth of such things. Would you put your name to that kind of thing, had you authored it?
__________UPDATE__________
There's more. Elizabeth Warren. More Kos. WaPo Opinions. Alternet. Hullabaloo, here and here. The ways and means of the police in things is interesting, per the one Hullabaloo item, and Brad Blog.
Compare, re police and prosecutorial and judicial discretion, per Bradblog; here, here and here. And that first item - it says and the facts say - claims that the Occupy movement is just the Democrats up to mischief, does not fit what the establishment's darling Democrat officials have been doing.
LA Times, toasted, here.
Do you suppose LA Times folks who are calling all of the editorial policy shots there would give kudos to Cuomo and to the Rahm of Chicago?
This thing is growing legs, and those poll results suggest all our ordinary folks can tell grassroots from astroturf.
Ya betcha. Big question -- will ballot box choices arise, or will it degenerate to two-party same-old, same-old?
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Wrong choice of words. Not "degenerate." Remain.