Occupy Wall Street -: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Occupy Wall Street Is Waging a Civil War in the US

Press TV

JOHN HUDSON230 Views5:37 PM ET

In today's tour of state-sponsored propaganda: the 99 percent conspire to overthrow the U.S., Cuba's Hollywood hero Benicio del Toro slams America, and PBS stars in an Al Qaeda propaganda film.

Occupy Goes to War

Think Occupy Wall Street is a peaceful protest movement? Clearly you're not reading Press TV, Iran's state-owned news outlet. In a bout of wishful thinking, the outlet says today Occupy protesters are conspiring to wage a civil war in the United States.

The people in the United States will eventually launch a civil war against the minority capitalist cartels who are making enormous profits at the cost of the people’s sufferings, a political analyst tells Press TV.

Amazing scoop, right? Let's see how this "analyst" explains this development:

“Ultimately, people in the US are turning these international wars of aggression around and they are turning them into a civil war against the one percent that profits it as human suffering goes on,” said Caleb Maupin, with the International Action Center from New York, in a Wednesday interview with Press TV.

Hmmm. Unfortunately for Maupin (and Iran), he doesn't have any evidence of an actual OWS plot to take up arms. It's just aspirational talk. And strange aspirational talk, for that matter, considering that Maupin works for an anti-war group founded by former US Attorney General Rasmey Clark. If you'd like to debate this issue further, Maupin's Twitter page can be found here.

Benicio Speaks the Truth

Actor Benicio del Toro of Traffic, The Usual Suspects, and other great films has made a friend in the Cuban News Agency. The country's state-run outlet is propping up criticisms he raised in Cannes last week about restrictions on US citizens travelling to Cuba:

Del Toro told the press that the US ban on traveling to Cuba is a kind of censorship, and that in order to travel to the Caribbean island you have to ask for a special permission from the U.S. government, pay a large amount of money, and then wait for several months to obtain the approval.

It's a little suspicious that del Toro isn't quoted in the article but not at all surprising that he might complain about the red tape involved in traveling to Cuba. After all, he is making his directorial debut with Seven Days in Cuba, a film about a young American tourist's adventures in Havana. One would imagine those travel restrictions would make producing a movie there a nightmare.

Frontline Plays a Starring Role in an al Qaeda Propaganda Film

Following Frontline's blockbuster documentary on al Qaeda in Yemen this week, the network has an interesting follow-up story on al Qaeda's sophisticated PR machine. One of the breathtaking scenes of the documentary features Gaith Abdul-Ahad observing prisoner's captured by the Al Qaeda affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia. When Abdul-Ahad was visiting the prisoners, a member of Ansar al-Shari was videotaping everything. Weirdly enough, weeks later, Frontline's reporter showed up in a propaganda film by the Madad News Agency, Ansar al-Sharia's media wing. "It’s the perfect example of just how media-savvy Ansar al-Sharia has become over the last year," writes Frontline's digital producer Azmat Khan. You can see the video below:

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author atjhudson@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
John Hudson

Topics: Benicio Del Toro, Cuba, Iran

The Failure of Occupy Wall Street

For those who are objective and unemotional it was easy to see this coming. The Occupy "movement" (and I use that term generously) has spiraled into irrelevance and relative obscurity. And it's a shame, as much of its message had broad resonance which could've been harnessed into significant power and influence in Washington. Instead, it became a whole lotta nuthin' over nuthin.'

So what went wrong?:

1. The "Occupy" Factor: Successful protest movements aren't about occupation, per se. This movement was too tied to its home base, a small symbolic tent-city near Wall Street, and in other similar parks in Boston, San Francisco and other cities. In order to rally scalable national support people needed to see marchers taking to the streets rather than largely hanging out in a park, which served, rightly or wrongly, to portray the Zuccotti Park inhabitants as drifters, vagrants and freeloaders rather than committed protesters. Much of the attention was not over its message but over the communal aspect of park life. Successful protest movements aren't about camping out, book sharing, eating, and "talking to each other," as one organizer told me. As a friend of mine joked, Zuccotti looked more like Bonnaroo. It confined and defined the message in a way that was limited and negative.

2. No Leadership: Every successful protest movement needs a leader; a strong, passionate, articulate, visible face and voice of the movement. (See Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Lech Wałęsa, etc)

3. The Wrong Message: While I understood and agreed with much of what this movement was about, I think it took a deadly turn when it essentially turned into a "rich bad/poor good" theme. That wholesale indictment of everyone in the "1%" (including passionate, dedicated, extremely generous liberals like George Soros, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and the Kennedys) was the wrong message. The mission shouldn't have been class warfare, but equality and fairness for all through reasonable government regulation and taxation.

4. No Agenda: While the organizers prided themselves on the fact that they had no real agenda other than to vent the nation's collective anger over the economic divide and injustices on Wall Street, this lack of clear, stated demands was a huge mistake. It should've taken a lesson from the Tea Party movement, which was and remains powerful, articulate and clear in its demands and which sent 63 congressmen to Washington in an election year to advocate and legislate its small government, less taxes agenda.

And that last point is the real shame of it all. In an election year as significant as this one, the Occupy movement is as good as dead. It will have achieved nothing legislatively, it will have elected no one and, in the end, it has had no material impact on American life. Nothing, that is, if you measure it against all other successful protest movements.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Occupy Wall Street Movement Gets By With A Little Help From Its Musical Friends

May 23, 2012 1:46 PM

(credit: Music For Occupy)

Filed Under

Entertainment, Local, News,NY News, OWS

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, David Crosby and Graham Nash spent their early careers soundtracking a revolution – and they’re ready to do it again.

Baez, Nash and Dylan – via documentary director Michael Moore’s cover of “The Times They Are A-Changin” – are helping to soundtrack the Occupy Wall Street movement, via the new compilation Occupy This Album(released May 15).

The album’s executive producer, Jason Samel, says that the support of legacy artists has helped OWS gain steam among an older crowd.

“There are baby boomers out there running these huge corporations, these massive banks we’re fighting against, and they forget that they were on the picket lines 50 years ago, fighting against some of what we’re fighting against now – the way our government acts,” Samel tells CBS Local. “Our hope is that music – music they know, whether it’s Jackson Browne or Joan Baez – can get through to them.”

But it’s not all about living in the past, either.

Samel’s 99-song Occupy This Album compilation features plenty of artists who weren’t around to decry the Vietnam War in song, let alone born then. Big names like Tom Morello, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Blondie’s Deborah Harry, Willie Nelson, Ani DiFranco and more may draw people in, but the four-disc collection is a mix of politically-charged rock, folk and electronica, both young and old, familiar and unknown.

Samel’s goal with he album’s eclecticism: “Trying to reach people who wouldn’t normally go down to Zucotti Park [the original home of Occupy Wall Street] or even bother with the Occupy Movement.”

Occupy Wall Street Movement Gets By With A Little Help From Its Musical Friends

Occupy Wall Street protestors and other groups march on May 1, 2012. (credt: Sonia Rincon, 1010 WINS)

Once you know the story behindOccupy This Album, however, the roster of artists on the compilation becomes even more impressive. Samel’s goal of documenting the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September, through music gained steamed when documentary director Michael Moore got involved.

“I was contacted by Michael Moore’s people because I owned a couple of domains that they were interested in building an Occupy websites on,” he says. “I developed a relationship with them early on – about a week into the movement. A few weeks after that, I asked him if he wanted to be involved in the album. He said, ‘Sure, so long as I can sing Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times Are A-Changin’.’ I thought, ‘Oh sure, let me call Bob and make sure that’s alright with him [laughs]’.”

(Moore reached out to Dylan directly and eventually got an enthusiastic approval to include his cover, which the liberal director first performed in his 1997 documentary, The Big One. Listen to his cover below.)

Occupy Wall Street protesters cross the Williamsburg Bridge (credit: STAN HONDA/AFP/GettyImages)

From there, Samel used Twitter to track down a number of artists who appear on the compilation, but he also spent time down at Zuccotti Park, making friends through “the people’s stage.”

His conversations led him to Pete Seeger’s grandson, musician and activist Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, who introduced him to Woodstock folk duo Mike & Ruthy, who introduced Samel to the Guthries and Warren Haynes’ management, who introduced him to Third Eye Blind’s people.

Within a month, Samel had nearly 20 artists on board for Occupy This Album, released through his Music For Occupy label and with proceeds benefiting the Occupy movement.

But the album almost hit a snag. “One of Michael Moore’s producers texted me saying Jackson Browne, David Crosby and Graham Nash were on some talk show and someone asked them why they don’t make a benefit album for Occupy,” Samel says.

“This was before we had announced our album and anybody really knew much about it. They said, ‘Oh, we’d love to!’ I immediately scrambled to figure out how to contact Jackson Browne and Crosby & Nash. These are some of my idols, and I had no idea how to do that. But I started making calls, and eventually I found the right people that lead me to Crosby & Nash’s manager, and they immediately jumped on board.”

In the end, Samel and his cohorts gathered “99 artists for the 99 percent,” but he says that’s just the beginning.

“There were musicians who wanted to be part of the album but they couldn’t be because of their record label or their management,” Samel says. “Still, I know at least 99 more artists who would want to help with a second Occupy album.”

– Jillian Mapes, CBS Local

Monday, May 21, 2012

Should Banksters, Wall Streeters & Investors Be Forced to Pay to Get Us Out of the Recession They Caused?

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With Greece on the verge of default, we're about to learn how little has really changed since governments around the world wrote the last round of bailout checks to prop up failing financial institutions. Just as the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market rippled into nearly every corner of the global financial system, so too will a pending default by Greece.
A look at Greece's borrowing history shows that defaulting on debt obligations is nothing new for the country. Over the last two centuries, Greece has been in a state of default more than half the time.
What's different today is the interconnected nature of the global financial system. In the past, a default was a traumatic event for financial institutions with direct exposure, but it didn't pose a threat to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case.
A Greek default would send shock waves through Europe's banking system. Massive write-downs by banks are sure to be followed by even larger taxpayer-funded bailouts. Similar to the response to the subprime crisis, governments will argue that some institutions are simply too big to let fail. And most people, frightened by the likely consequences of such a failure, will agree.
But the cost of these new bailouts won't be limited to Europe. A Greek default would start in Athens, but it wouldn't be long before it's felt in Paris, Berlin, New York and Toronto. In today's intertwined financial markets, everyone has exposure to everyone else's problems.
The European Union has already responded to a shift in Greek politics by saying that if they don't implement the austerity measures required of them, the country will not get any further bailout money. And if Greece does not receive the bailout money, it will be in default and will almost inevitably leave the European Union.

Then Greece's departure will make Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and possibly even France more likely to take their leave of the European Union.
If Greece defaults on its debt, someone is going to lose a lot of money. That "someone' could be German & French banks. Also, the _derivatives_ tied to Greece defaulting means that "someone' will lose a lot of money. The European Union may very well therefore need to step in and print who knows how much money to contain the crisis.
Compounding these problems, Ireland is holding a referendum at the end of May to vote on the austerity measures imposed on it by the European Union. Will Ireland indirectly vote to leave the European Union?
Bottom line: The situation in the European Union continues to erode. For the first time, one euro trades below $1.30 US. With so many U.S. S&P 500 companies having revenue exposure to Europe, is it any wonder the stock market has been in a free-fall as of late?
How will all this play out?
Despite the cash that large corporations have on their balance sheets, they are not spending. Due to Cisco and other technology firms' weak earnings outlook, Internet technology spending growth worldwide has been slashed by many forecasters and analysts for the remainder of 2012.
There are clear signs the U.S. economy is weakening considerably, especially when considering the earnings outlook for the remainder of 2012 from key companies within the S&P 500. After a great start to the year, May is proving to be a terrible month for stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 518 points since the beginning of May. Corporate insider selling of stock is at a record high.
The Greek elections struck fear into the hearts of the global banksters. And if the next Greek election produces an anti-austerity government, Greece will almost certainly make a speedy exit from the euro. If this happens -- and it now appears inevitable -- the consequences for the global economy are extremely gloomy. Yet US media and US politicians are largely silent on the issue, almost as if nothing were happening.
What specifically will happen when Greece leaves the Euro?
Foreign banks hold over $90 billion in Greek debt in the public and in the private sectors. These enormous losses could very well bring down banks in Europe and the US. How and why? The struggling Euro countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland will see their borrowing costs skyrocket because wealthy investors will be more reluctant to waste anymore investment money on risky Euro countries; this will then guarantee a further downward spiral of bailouts and bankruptcy, which will eventually bring down major banks throughout Europe and the US.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Occupy Handbook

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e505033c-a02f-11e1-88e6-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1vRtr4bKc

Review by John Gapper

Janet Byrne has assembled a rewarding collection of essays on the Occupy Wall Street movement

Do you remember Occupy Wall Street? Last week, it was hard to do so amid the round-the-clock coverage for Facebook’s initial public offering and the $20bn in paper wealth that Mark Zuckerberg gained. Or the decision by Eduardo Saverin – the allegedly hard-done-by hero of the film The Social Network, to renounce US citizenship to avoid taxes on his own Facebook billions.

It sounds as if he took the tongue-in-cheek advice to the “Upper Ones” from the author Michael Lewis: become more like the wealthy in Greece. “To the member of the Greek Lower 99, a Greek Upper One is as good as invisible. He pays no taxes, lives no place, and bears no relationship to his fellow citizens.”

ON THIS STORY

JOHN GAPPER

As Janet Byrne, the editor of this disparate yet rewarding collection of articles, writes, OWS “has the rare distinction of being a protest movement that even the objects of its attack can find little fault with.” The proto-anarchist meeting of like minds in Zuccotti Park aroused both fascination and sympathy.

“The basic message – that the American political order is absolutely and irredeemably corrupt, that both parties have been bought and sold by the wealthiest one per cent of the population, and that if we are to live in any sort of genuinely democratic society, we’re going to have to start from scratch – clearly struck a profound chord,” writes David Graeber, a founder of the movement.

Yet eight months since, OWS has melted away in the public consciousness in the US. By clearing Zuccotti Park in November, the New York authorities excised some of its heart. The medium of the anarchist-style General Assembly, an attempt to live by Athenian democracy in Manhattan, was the message.

The brilliance of OWS was to unite a range of social concerns – the power of corporate interests over politics, the stagnation in median incomes, the emergence of a global super-elite, the crash that ended what Raghuram Rajan calls the “let them eat debt” era, and Wall Street – into one slogan: We are the 99 per cent.

The question of what to do was deferred but was bound, eventually, to recur. This book makes a decent stab at answering it (although it is largely written by a group that is close to, if not in, the one per cent themselves). But nothing in it feels as convincing as the movement itself.

Although many of the social and economic trends against which OWS stood are universal, it focuses on the US and the problem of its sclerotic political system. Both Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, and the author Scott Turow, criticise the Supreme Court’s persistent striking down of any limits on campaign finance.

The court “has figuratively allowed the rich to speak through microphones while the poor can barely whisper,” writes Turow, “ . . . I have never understood how permitting the wealthy so much greater influence over the political process can be squared with the vision of equality on which the country was founded.”

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose “Volcker rule” is at the heart of a battle between Wall Street and regulators, contributes a short blast against lobbying in Washington: “Can it really be true that our government is for sale? I hope not. But the threat makes it worth occupying K Street.”

To an outsider, it seems obvious that the dominance of money in US politics is pernicious. That problem is not unique to the US. Money and politics are even more intertwined in China, where the relatives of Communist party leaders make millions through connections. But it could in theory be tackled country-by-country.

Many of the trends identified by OWS cross borders, as do the super-wealthy with houses in London, New York and the Caribbean islands. Similarly, banks and corporations threatened with tougher regulations and higher taxes can – and do – threaten to move elsewhere.

As Martin Wolf argues in a wide-ranging essay: “Ours is not the world familiar to Adam Smith more than two centuries ago. Today, markets are global, not local. The dominant businesses are limited liability companies not personal proprietorships or partnerships. Debtors are made bankrupt, not thrown into prison.”

The tethers on the wealthy and successful, in other words, are much weaker than in the past. As hard as campaign finance reform in the US might be, creating the kind of global governance that could respond effectively to this are remote indeed. While some of the rich might agree in principle with OWS, pinning them down is another matter

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Occupy Wall Street versus American military might

The United States' standing as "mediator" of international protests is a major obstacle for OWS to have to overcome.

Last Modified: 17 May 2012 11:47

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OWS protesters have started a long-term movement that has the potential to change the entire system [Reuters]

Cambridge, United Kingdom - Where a state stands on the international scale impacts the fate of that state's social movements. The United States' position as a global military power puts the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement at a particular disadvantage.

In The Green Movement's Regret and OWS' Red Ink Problem, I illustrated some of the domestic political dynamics influencing the OWS as it moves to reassemble anew. While domestic and international formations influence one another, it's worth focussing on the interplay between international configurations and locally grounded social movements. Social movements have a better chance of achieving their political objectives in states that depend on patrons for protection. In other words, the chances of success multiply for social movements operating in states that are unable to dominate their global security networks.

Security networks are some of the most enduring international networks. Saudi Arabia, for instance, started its integration within Washington's security apparatus in the early 1930s; a process facilitated by ARAMCO, the State Department and Al Saud clan. The Saudis are not alone. After the Soviets refused to rescue Egypt's Third Army during the Yom Kippur War, Cairo too switched protectors and joined Washington's security network in the late 1970s.
This dependence on foreign protection had significant domestic drawbacks for Egypt. Unlike the military in Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis keep intentionally dysfunctional, Egypt's military was semi-capable, and more importantly, semi-independent from the head of state. The US, as a result, was able to make a deal with the military by rolling over Mubarak.
In short, once the political cost of the Tahrir Square protests induced on Mubarak - and by extension, on the US - passed a certain threshold, the White House arrived at an understanding with the Egyptian military (which had grown weary of both Mubarak and his parallel security apparatus). The leadership reshuffled and protestors achieved some of their political objectives.
Top-down decision making

Patron states' exertion of this sort of influence is similar to top-down corporate decision-making, where middle management is sacrificed to quell public opinion. Protest movements in today's informational society are mediated globally. As a result, leaders susceptible to their patron's vertical decision making are particularly wary of both domestic social movements and, especially, their mediation. By the same token, social movements that assemble in states that do not dominate their security network, have a higher chance of achieving their political objectives.

This is precisely what took place in Iran during the 1979 revolution, whereby various social movements greatly benefited from the Shah's total dependence on the American security network. US generals quickly concluded that the Iranian military had neither the will nor a workable plan to push back against the revolutionaries. Consequently, Carter relayed a message to the Shah, "Maybe you ought to take a vacation".

In-depth coverage of the global movement

Carter's goal was to make vertical adjustments by placing Bakhtiar in power to prevent "radical" forces from taking power. The Shah had no choice but to act on Carter's "suggestion". It was a fatal mistake. More "radical" forces did take the country, and Washington lost its direct vertical line to headquarters in Tehran. The revolutionaries' success in Iran was in part rooted in Tehran's inability to dominate its security network, as a result of the Shah's total dependence on American might.

Thirty years later, another uprising took place in Iran with contrasting results. Iran's transformed position on the international scale contributed to the Green Movement's failure in achieving most of its political objectives in 2009, despite its millions of protesters rallying in the streets for months. Since 1979, and irrespective of its many internal problems, Iran has come to dominate its own security network that includes Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon and parts of the Palestinian territories.
In the absence of vertical instruments of pressure during times of mass protests, what remains for external powers is horizontal pressure which the West, to some extent, deployed during the 2009 street demonstrations in Iran. Horizontal pressure is characterised by intervening in a state's media space (BBC Persian, VOA et cetera), sanctions and ultimately, war. We must acknowledge then, where a state stands within its security network impacts the global dimension of, and influence on, the internal power struggle and chances of success for mass political mobilisation.

Coming back to the US, it must be noted that OWS' challenges are not strictly domestic in nature. Domestic and international formations are woven in ways that ignoring either sphere is like stepping into the ring with one eye shut. The United States' global standing is a major obstacle for OWS to have to overcome.

I hope that I do not leave Occupiers with the impression that they are totally impotent in confronting their challenges. While there is very little chance for the OWS to achieve its political objectives now, what has started promises to transform into a movement that will contest, in a serious way, the totality of the United States' political/economic configuration.
Yet, Occupiers need to be clear-eyed about where they stand now, and how far down this path actually runs.
Kusha Sefat is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Cambridge, Queens' College.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Occupy Wall Street -

Thursday, May 31, 2012