Electronic Pen

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

There may be isolated incidents of anti-Semitism within the Occupy movement but there is little evidence that it is a driving force.

During an Occupy LA protest, Patricia McAllister, a substitute teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), told Reason TV that "the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our federal reserve -- which is not run by the federal government -- they need to be run out of this country." In a later interview with Fox11, she said "Jews have been run out of 109 countries throughout history, and we need to run them out of this one."

Whatever else she may be, McAllister, who was not a speaker at the rally and who was subsequently fired by the District for her comments, has become the poster child for the right; proof positive that the Occupy Movement is brimming with anti-Semites.

Are there a significant number of participants in the Occupy Movement engaged in anti-Semitic behavior? Where is the anti-Semitism coming from? How does a "leaderless" movement deal with its outliers?

Just as it was important to point out the anti-Semitic and racist signs that were visible at Tea Party rallies and events, it is important to scrutinize the Occupy Movement as well. It is also important to note that incidents of Tea Party racism were broadly spread across the movement. (See "Race and the Tea Party Movement" -- http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2159.)

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SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Hundreds of defense contractors that defrauded the U.S. military received more than $1.1 trillion in Pentagon contracts during the past decade, according to a Department of Defense report prepared for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Sanders (I-Vt.) called the report "shocking." He said aggressive steps must be taken to ensure taxpayer dollars aren't wasted.

"The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money," said Sanders. "With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money."

The report detailed how the Pentagon paid $573.7 billion during the past 10 years to more than 300 contractors involved in civil fraud cases that resulted in judgments of more than $1 million, $398 billion of which was awarded after settlement or judgment for fraud.  When awards to "parent" companies are counted, the Pentagon paid more than $1.1 trillion during the past 10 years just to the 37 top companies engaged in fraud.

Another $255 million went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period. Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.

Some of the nation's biggest defense contractors were involved.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

A recent article in the New York Observer highlights the ongoing challenge Occupy Wall Street faces in preventing the New York Police Department (NYPD) and perhaps FBI infiltrators from creating acts of violence that will turn the nation against the movement.

Mayor Bloomberg and the FBI know that nothing will change the mood of support for Occupy Wall Street faster than having them portrayed as a "violent mob." So, there have been ongoing incidents of what appear to be provocations by the police or infiltrators to create an image of an unruly group of lawbreakers. (Just remember the Brooklyn Bridge incident for one.)

BuzzFlash at Truthout warned of this likely ongoing effort in a commentary on October 4, "The NYPD and FBI Are Trying to Infiltrate Wall Street Protest to Discredit It: Of This You Can Be Sure."

Among the recurring reports of police infiltration and provocateurs is an account today of the incident that led to the NYPD arrest of more than 20 protesters trying to close their Citibank accounts over the weekend.

One of the persons arrested at the Citibank branch, Marshall Garrett, told the Village Voice:

But what was unknown to us and to a lot of people that day, including those in Times Square, was that there were undercover cops already there, paid to be disruptive and to be loud. One undercover cop present [at Citi] was louder than the entire group.

He arrested one of the protestors outside, and slammed her into the wall, and pushed her back into the bank. We all saw him at the precinct with us. He was laughing with the fellow white shirt cops, telling them about what we'd been saying, basically. It was a bit startling how inside their information was - how they were being paid to go to these protests and put us in situations where we'd be arrested and not be able to leave.

In fact, you can see one of the undercover police officer provocateurs in this alarming video. Watch through to the point where this plainclothes NYPD cop arrests a young woman, who is a Citibank customer, for merely being outside the bank branch because she was involved in the protest, but not inside the branch building. It is quite chilling indeed. Four or five NYPD officers just make the woman disappear.

The biggest challenge for Occupy Wall Street will be to uproot covert efforts to discredit the movement by law enforcement agencies that are supposed to protect the Constitution instead of subverting it.

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The sales tax on a pair of shoes is 6%. The sales tax on a financial transaction is 0%.

That's right, a struggling homeowner getting the kids ready for school is subsidizing the millionaire buyers of the high-risk derivatives and credit default swaps that nearly wrecked our economy. Meanwhile, the super-rich divert our attention from the injustice, claiming "class warfare" at any attempt to fix the system. And it needs fixing. Speculative purchases of financial transactions are subject only to a tiny fee that helps the Securities and Exchange Commission keep the lucrative system in place.

Legislators around the country, hesitant to take on their powerful friends in the corporate world, instead cut school budgets, services for the poor, and police departments while raising utility fees and sales taxes.

It's a lot easier to pick on the middle class than on the people who control the media.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Maybe there's more to Mayor Bloomberg of New York backing down from having the New York Police Department (NYPD) eradicate Occupy Wall Street than his incestuous and profitable relationship with Wall Street (given his $19.5 billion in wealth from the financial industry and his "personal" link with the owners of Liberty Park).

Bloomberg has used the NYPD as a militarized occupation force in southern Manhattan to contain and suppress a group of Americans intent on outing the financial mismanagement of Wall Street. But he's in a fix.

Apparently, New Yorkers don't agree with the baronial mayor, who likes to give the appearance of being a "common man" from time to time.

The fifth paragraph of a New York Times article updating the mayor's continued thinly veiled disdain for the growing movement for accountability from the financial titans - and for a just society - reveals that the multibillionaire defender of oligarchical rule (after all, he is a role model in this area) is facing overwhelming opposition to his position:

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday found broad support for Occupy Wall Street; 72 percent of New York City voters, including 52 percent of Republicans, said the protesters should be able to stay as long as they wanted if they continued to obey the laws. The telephone survey, of 1,068 registered voters, was conducted from Thursday to Sunday.

Those are landslide numbers of New York City residents who support Occupy Wall Street protesters exercising their rights in a democracy.

In New York State, Bloomberg's use of a public police force to defend the entrenched, gluttonous and counterproductive-to-the-national-interest leadership and practices of much of the financial industry is also facing a stiff pushback, according to The Associated Press:

The push for a higher tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million a year is getting fresh life with a new poll showing overwhelming support, a high-profile rally on Monday and the strengthening Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City.

The Siena College poll found 72 percent of New York voters support the tax to avoid further budget cuts. Just 26 percent oppose the proposal by powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Mayor Bloomberg is using taxpayer money on deploying an occupying police force to try to close down a demonstration of taxpayers guaranteed in the Constitution.

He sounds a bit like King George just before the American Revolution.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Last month I wrote a piece for this website called "The Not So Stealth Campaign to Silence Critics of Religious Extremism" (http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13036). The essence of the piece was to call attention to a column in USA Today by Mark I. Pinsky attacking researchers, writers, reporters and critics of two trending developments on the Christian right, Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation.

The liberal Pinsky -- as several conservative writers had done previously -- asserted that the NAR and other Dominionists were neither broad-based movements embraced by the evangelical community, nor, as some on the left were claiming - a particular political threat. In developing his argument, Pinsky demeaned critics and made the bizarre assertion that Pastor John Hagee and conservative Christian historian David Barton were marginal figures on the conservative evangelical landscape.

Pinsky's column, and a subsequent endorsement of his views by the Rev. Jim Wallis, the president of Sojourners and a person associated with more liberal religious leaders, led to the writing of an "An Open Letter to Jim Wallis from Writers about American Religion and Politics." The letter was signed onto by fourteen authors, journalists and bloggers that have written about these issues for years (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/10/6/11493/4209).

That letter resulted in a lively, albeit largely sequestered discussion on a number of websites.

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STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH, FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In The New York Times "Sunday Review" of Sept. 25, 2011, Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent magazine, published an article entitled "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" It is drawn from a new book of his entitled American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.  In the article (full disclosure: I have not read the book, only the review that appeared in The Times Sunday Book Review on Sept. 18) Mr. Kazin attributed the aforementioned decline to a number of factors.  They included: unlike the (relatively) powerful left of the 1930s, the modern left, unlike the modern Right, has not been germinating for very long; in the 1970s they started leaving traditional "left" issues such as "class justice" for such things as rights for minorities and women; the failed promises of the Democratic Party, post pre-Viet Nam Lyndon Johnson; dependence on "politicians;" and "not reconnecting with ordinary Americans." So, you see, the "decline of the US left" is all the left's fault.

Well, historical developments like the decline, indeed the virtual disappearance of any real, socialistically-oriented left as real as its cousin, the "liberal/progressive" left, don't happen in an historical vacuum.  Indeed in this case it would appear that what the Right-wing, Corporate Power has done to the US left since the height of its power during the New Deal is the primary cause of its decline. Further it would appear that the failure of self-styled US leftists to recognize and come to grips with the amazingly powerful legal, legislative, and propagandistic forces that  the US Corporate Power mobilized against the left, and then organize to oppose it with strength, is also a major cause of the US left's decline.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When Andy Borowitz captures the truth of the moment, using satire, you know the ruling elite are on the defensive. There's something all too pathetically ironic about Borowitz's daily headline: "Libyan Government Warns NYPD to Exercise Restraint: Urges NATO Action to Protect American Dissidents."

In a riveting unmasking of hypocrisy, a YouTube video has appeared that masterfully shows the blatant hypocrisy of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton in applying one standard for attacks on protesters overseas - and quite another in the US.

While Obama has given some lip service to the Occupy Wall Street movement, he has qualified that with an upholding of the status quo of a financial sector that cratered the US economy. And he has said nothing about the police brutality in attempts, particularly in New York, to suppress the "right of redress" protests.

Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times:

But anyone who believes in markets should be outraged that banks rig the system so that they enjoy profits in good years and bailouts in bad years.

The banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, and that's just another form of bank robbery.

Yet, President Obama even used Martin Luther King to project a narrative that it's really a bunch of "good people" on Wall Street who made a few mistakes. In his King memorial dedication speech on October 16, Obama predicted that if Martin Luther King were alive today, "I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there."

First of all, this is not just an issue of struggling unemployed workers; it's an issue of a financial system that needs systemic reform. Second of all, it's not a minor issue of "excesses" as if the chairman of the Bank of America had an extra bottle of champagne for dinner on the company account. It is, as Kristof writes, "another form of bank robbery." Obama, his Treasury secretary and his attorney general are doing very little to prosecute those who conducted the bank robberies, but they are tolerating the arrests of those who are witnesses to the crime.

The reality is that Obama believes in this financial system, even when it has de facto disproved that it can offer much to growing the American economy. It is fossilized, state-sanctioned and subsidized greed. For Obama, who is looking to a record campaign war chest to offset low ratings and a stalled economy, Wall Street money is essential.

The duopoly of the American two-party system, as this video reconfirms, will go to war for the rights of protesters overseas, but champions putting them in jail at home.

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JIM BLOCK FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Light at the End?

Finally, serious opposition has emerged against the full-scale, right wing and corporate takeover of American society. The initial target of Occupy Wall Street outrage is the dismantling of the New Deal by the emerging plutocracy. Defending the American people's right to basic social welfare, government regulation, and full employment against growing dominance by the rich and powerful is a hopeful beginning. To regain the political initiative, however, progressives must reignite the broader demand for a just society.

The deep popular discontent, symbolized by the growing protests, represents an unparalleled opportunity for progressive renewal. Americans yearn more than ever for a more humane society. They want communities where individual fulfillment is cultivated by a nurturing childhood and with meaningful work. They want a social safety net and a restored social fabric to provide security and connectedness.

Progressives must move beyond their cautious pragmatism. Once they retreated during the Reagan era from seeking a more just and emancipated society, they were limited to opposing the conservative onslaught. To heed this call, progressives must go beyond the self-defeating assumptions of the past: the false choice between social justice and individual freedom. The institutions that protect our basic social needs have the power to nurture our full human and democratic potential.

Given the scale of contemporary society, America's once vibrant individualism can only flourish - despite what conservatives want us to believe - when the public sector creates the conditions for self-realization, social justice, and democracy. This essay offers a new "deep frame" in George Lakoff's terms, a "new moral narrative" for the regeneration of progressive initiative. Conservatives will call this expression of our common will a new feudalism, for they hope to derail the only - popular - alternative to corporate and organizational authoritarianism.

Challenging Progressive Assumptions

Why did twentieth century, social reform lose momentum? The right acquired power by playing on widespread fears of organizational society. Manipulating the traditional myth of the unrestrained individual, they blame every social ailment and personal limit on public constraints. Yet, progressives and liberals have equally associated freedom and democracy with a simpler time of individuality, local government, and accessible opportunity. The choices were either complicity in the conservative illusion, or social justice at the cost of European-style statism. Unable to connect with popular aspirations for genuine individualism and an accountable public, the movement for change collapsed.

Progressives must learn from history. The New Deal also refused to link freedom and opportunity with a sustained public role. Rather than create significant alternatives to the market, government was a necessary, but temporary evil to help people back on their feet. Not surprisingly, once these programs brought about the modern middle class, Republicans intensified their theological campaign to root out, rather than consort with such evil. Progressives could only watch as generations of Americans boosted into the middle class hearkened to their rechristening as self-made entrepreneurs, and began cutting away the floor - the public sector - from beneath their own feet.

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A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

Washington - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should adopt a rule with real teeth to limit oil speculators, not a watered-down measure set for a vote on Tuesday.

The commission is slated to consider a rule that Sanders said "will do little or nothing" to limit traders who artificially drive up gasoline and home heating oil prices. "At a time when the American people are experiencing extremely high oil and gas prices, this would be simply unacceptable," Sanders wrote in a letter to Chairman Gary Gensler.

Sanders said the weak proposal before the commission falls short of what Congress intended in last year's Wall Street reform law. The Dodd-Frank Act required the commission to finalize rules on speculators by last Jan. 17. "If the CFTC had done its job and obeyed the law, consumers would have received real relief at the gas pump during the past nine months, particularly during the summer driving season. Unfortunately, this did not happen."

The commission still could act in time to substantially lower heating oil prices this winter. "This is more important now than ever," Sanders said. He cited new projections by the Energy Information Administration that heating oil prices in the Northeast will set a new record this winter and climb to more than $3.70 a gallon. Vermonters could pay up to $4 a gallon for heating oil this winter, he added. "If these projections are accurate, it will be harder than ever for Vermonters and nearly 7 million other Americans who heat their homes with fuel oil to stay warm this winter. We need the CFTC to be vigilant and make sure that this does not happen," Sanders said.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

This makes Herman's "maverick" status
Officially become a joke:
In any taste test, we can now assume that
He'd shun Pepsi for Koch.

http://news.yahoo.com/long-ties-koch-brothers-key-cains-campaign-110518961.html

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

With 99% of America standing up to them, the super-rich probably don't feel very funny right now. But they have a history of humorous statements, as demonstrated by Mitt Romney's reference to Occupy Wall Street as "class warfare."

Yes, Mitt, class warfare has been waged since 1980, as almost
all of America's new income has gone to the richest 1%, who have tripled
their share, mainly through tax cuts and deregulation. If the average
American family had just kept up with U.S. productivity, it would be
making almost DOUBLE what it is now.

More conservative humor can be found in the statement "Don't tax the rich
- they're job creators," which ignores the fact that the total
unemployment/underemployment rate has increased from 15% to 30% in just
five years while middle-class household wealth has dropped 36%.

Then there's the notion of downtrodden rich people. Someone making
"$200,000 is not a rich person,"stated Barbara Lang, president of the D.C.
Chamber of Commerce. "$500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if
there is no bonus," said James F. Reda, director of a compensation
consulting firm. "In some parts of the country," $250K "is middle class,"
suggested CNN reporter Kiran Chetry.

While the rich are just getting by, the poor, according to some
conservatives, are doing quite well. "What are they complaining about?"
asked CNN's Carol Costello, citing a Heritage Foundation study that
suggested poor Americans were reasonably comfortable. Sen. Orrin Hatch
(R-Utah) claimed that "The poor...need to share some of the
responsibility." Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger got right to the
point: the poor should just "suck it up and cope."

Taxes, while usually not funny, bring out the best in corporate
spokespeople. Like Anne Eisele of General Electric, which paid no taxes
from 2008 to 2010: "G.E. is committed to acting with integrity in relation
to our tax obligations...GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because
we did not owe any." And Ken Cohen of Exxon Mobil, which paid 2% in taxes
from 2008 to 2010: "Any claim we don't pay taxes is absurd...ExxonMobil is
a leading U.S. taxpayer." And John Watson of Chevron, part of an industry
with the lowest federal tax rate: "The oil and gas industry pays its fair
share in taxes" And Paul Ryan on Boeing, which paid no U.S. taxes on over
$4 billion of income in 2010: "Their tax rate is extremely high, far
higher than their competitors.

Next is the Orwellian "war is peace" humor, as in the claim by Mitch
McConnell and Mitt Romney that tax cuts increase revenue and help to
reduce the deficit. And the contention by Mackubin Thomas Owens of the
Foreign Policy Research Institute that high gas prices cause low gas
prices (because of the increased incentive to open up new drilling sites).

Finally, this writer's personal favorite, full-delusional humor. Lloyd
Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, assures us that "Everybody
should be, frankly, happy...the financial system led us into the crisis
and it will lead us out."

It's all so funny it hurts.

Paul Buchheit is the founder and developer of social justice and
educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org,
RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars:
Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at
paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

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ANN DAVIDOW FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Well here we are in another of those wasteful congressional meet-ups where endless talk adds up to meaningless partisan chatter - - another week of inflammatory rhetoric that lacks clarity and fails to define the main objectives of our national debate. How can so much sound and fury add up to so little substance and yet demand so much media attention? What makes the pretense that surrounds our political deliberations resonate in the minds of the electorate even when, in the aftermath of all the verbal nonsense, we are left asking ourselves ‘how's that again?"

There is growing concern about the part money plays in deciding our elections. Recent decisions that equate cash with free speech have turned our electoral processes into spending free-for-alls that fail to do justice to our system, no pun intended. Of equal concern should be the increasing emphasis on religion in our political world. However we came to occupy this twisted historical moment it is surely time we took ourselves out of the unhealthy fusion of religious fervor and ideological tumult.

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WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Newspaper columnist Ann Coulter, spreading the lies of the extreme right wing, called the Occupy Wall Street protestors, "tattooed, body-pierced, sunken-chested 19-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun." She claimed the protestors, now in the thousands in New York, are "directionless losers [who] pose for cameras while uttering random liberal clichés, lacking any reason or coherence." (Several hundred thousand of these "directionless losers" are expected to attend rallies in more than 650 cities, Oct. 15.)

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House majority leader, called the protest nothing more than "growing mobs," completely oblivious to his myriad statements that he supports "mobs" when they are from the Tea Party. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, tacking as far right as possible to avoid anyone thinking he was once a moderate, called the protest "dangerous."

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, in a moment that demonstrated how out of touch he is with the economic reality of the five-year recession, argued, "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks; if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!"

Glenn Beck, too irrational even for Fox News, which terminated him less than two years after it tried to make him a TV superstar, told his radio audience, the protestors "will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you."

Lauren Ellis of Mother Jones, at one time a cutting edge magazine for social justice, believed that the protestors have a "lack of focus." Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, wrote, "A protest without an objective is like a party or a picnic of the unemployed and the indolent. Unless you have an objective, what are you doing out there?"

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

According to the New York Times, Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend, Diana L. Taylor, sits on the board of Brookfield Properties, the owner of Zucotti Park (AKA Liberty Park). But that's hardly the ownly tie that has resulted in Brookfield becoming an active partner in Bloomberg's efforts to close down Occupy Wall Street.

The current gambit of, in essence, closing the public headquarters of the movement under the guise of "cleaning up" the park, and then imposing rules that would prohibit anything other than pedestrian traffic and sitting on benches, is now delayed. (It had originally been scheduled for 7 AM EST Friday.)

Occupy Wall Street put out a call last night for people to join them in preventing the New York Police Department -- allegedly acting at the behest of Brookfield Properties -- from effectively shutting down the active "headquarters" of the anti-Wall Street corruption and economic inequality groundswell uprising.  In addition, the public advocate for New York City -- a position not well known out of Manhattan, but one with considerable influence in city politics -- challenged Bloomberg's coordinated effort with Brookfield to render inoperative the anti-Wall Street beachhead.

"Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate," according to the New York Times, "had expressed concern over the city's actions as he inspected the park Thursday afternoon and listened to protesters' complaints."

Bloomberg had first tried to use the NYPD -- and perhaps others -- to infiltrate and perhaps bait the Occupy Wall Street protesters into some sort of violent act, which would turn public opinion against them, and allow him to use the sort of excessive police force employed in "The Battle of Seattle" several years ago to cut off the head of the populist surge that has put corporations and Wall Street on the defensive.  That didn't work, even though hundreds of people were arrested after claiming that the police led them onto the street level of the Brooklyn Bridge and then arrested them.

But plan "B" was for Brookfield Properties, which technically owns the public park as a result of it being built in return for zoning variations in the area, to "ask" for police help if plan "A" didn't pan out.

Just two weeks ago, Bloomberg -- worth $19.5 billion and whose fortune comes from an information software and device used by financial firms (along with a growing media empire, with an emphasis on business) -- spoke of a "sanitation crisis" in a rambling attack on Occupation Wall Street on a New York radio program. He implicitly threatened that he would close the site down.  Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Brookfield Properties was expressing "deep" concern about the sanitation conditions in the park.  This was not a coincidence: it was a public relations meme.

Newspaper accounts of the now delayed Zuccotti Park clean up generally accept that the City of New York was planning to have the NYPD arrest protesters who didn't clear the park as a response to a "request" from Brookfield Properties -- and it is true that there is such a written request.

But this is not Brookfield Properties acting on its own.  It could have done that a long time ago.  In fact it could have employed private security guards to clear the park of "temporary residents," by some legal interpretations of its rights as "owner" of the property.

Brookfield Properties is a multi-billion dollar commercial real estate company that is as tight as a tick with  Bloomberg and the Wall Street plutocracy.  It can't make a move in New York City to develop new projects without the approval of City Hall.  It didn't make a move on Zucotti Park (named after the chairman of Brookfield) until the mayor got his ducks in a row and his public relations and legal people felt they could use the "sanitation" ruse, while the mayor claimed -- for media consumption -- that he was in support of the constitutional right to protest. You can bet your last dollar that Brookfield Properties was asked to write its letter to City Hall at the time it did directly by City Hall.  The fact that the mayor's girlfriend is on the board of Brookfield is just symbolic icing on the cake of the oligarchy's symbiotic relationship.

However, due to factors already cited, and the strong legal possibility that the the NYPD could not be called in to Zucotti Park unless Brookfield Properties obtained a court order allowing for such a move, the mayor's office announced just before their scheduled de facto eviction that the police clear-out was being "delayed."

As BuzzFlash at Truthout noted in a commentary last week, "With the price of milk rising so high that many low-income New Yorkers can't afford it anymore, it's hardly comforting to know that...the priority of the multibillionaire mayor of New York is 'helping the banks.'"

Brookfield Properties does not make a move or a statement in regards to Zucotti Park without direction from Mayor Bloomberg's office.  Of this you can be certain.

Nearly every financial firm and multi-national corporation in America is relying on Bloomberg to be their fellow multi-billionaire point man in putting an end to this "insurrection," just like the British Tories tried to do with the American revolution.

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RICHARD POWER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Burning Man isn't what you think it is. Well, OK, Burning Man is more than you think it is. Much more. There is a powerful, new narrative developing within the legend of Burning Man, one that moves beyond Black Rock City and into the daily lives of some dedicated Burners.

What is this new narrative? And what does it offer those working to overcome the challenges of this troubled era? To answer these questions, I visited the offices of the Burning Man Project, on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, conducted numerous interviews with burners, and yes, drove up into the Nevada desert to immerse myself in Burning Man 2011.

Ethos and Pathos

Merriam-Webster defines pathos as "an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion," and ethos as "the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution." We are currently awash in pathos, but severely deficient in ethos.

As 50,000 burners headed to Black Rock City, the National Guard was airlifting food and water to the citizens of thirteen Vermont towns cut-off for days, without electricity or potable water, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. (NYT, 9-1-11) With four months to go in 2011, the U.S.A. has experienced a record 10 weather disasters causing at least $1 billion each in damages. (AP, 9-3-11)

As 50,000 burners headed to Black Rock City, James Hansen, the NASA's leading climate scientist was getting himself arrested outside the White House, in an act of civil disobedience aimed at urging President Obama to block the XL tar sands oil pipeline. Hansen says that the project would translate into "game over" for the climate upon which human civilization has been predicated for millennia. (Climate Progress, 6-25-11) Shouldn't NASA's leading climate scientist be inside the White House advising the President, rather than outside the White House, with thousands of other citizens, trying to get the President's attention?

Within the dominant culture of "the default world" (a term many burners use to refer to the world beyond Black Rock City), the cable news networks recently offered 24 hour coverage of Hurricane Irene as it hit NYC, but did not mention climate change once; similarly, earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama dared not even mention it once in his 2011 State of the Union address.

Friends, we are on our own.

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SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous, and secretive economic and political force in America.

If this country is to break out of the horrendous recession and create the millions of jobs we desperately need, if we are going to create a modicum of financial stability for the future, there is no question but that the American people are going to have to take a very hard look at Wall Street and demand fundamental reforms.  I hope these protests are the beginning of that process.

Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse.  Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.

As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world.

In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.

Now that the middle class is collapsing and a record-breaking 46 million Americans are living in poverty, the Federal Reserve has failed to act with the same sense of urgency to make sure that small businesses receive the affordable loans needed to put millions of Americans back to work and prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes.

As a result, Wall Street is back to making record-breaking profits, handing out record-breaking compensation packages, and taking the same risks that caused the financial crisis in the first place.  Meanwhile, 25 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed; middle class families are making $3,600 less than they did ten years ago; the foreclosure rate is still breaking new records; and the American people are still paying over $3.40 for a gallon of gas.

The financial crisis and the jobs crisis have demonstrated to the American people that we now have a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz eloquently articulated.  The rest of the 99 percent are, more or less, on their own.  We now have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major, advanced country on earth.  The top one percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spot light against Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

Here are several proposals that I am working on:

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Simultaneous with its recently concluded Values Voter Summit, the FRC announced the launching of its Values Voter Bus Tour aimed at registering and mobilizing new voters. Tony Perkins' group is operating on all cylinders and intends to drive voters to the GOP.

It has just concluded what it's calling the most successful Values Voter Summit in its history, and is now getting ready to launch a year long Values Voter Bus Tour aimed at influencing both the Republican Party's presidential primaries and the 2012 presidential election.

It is a 12-million dollar a year operation run by a very capable leader who rides the airwaves - the 24/7 cable news networks and conservative talk radio - like a veteran broncobuster. It has outlasted a number of other religious right groups (think Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition), and is outpacing the financially troubled, and once mighty, Focus on the Family.

It is one of the most outspokenly - and outrageously -- anti-gay organizations in the country.

Welcome to the world of Tony Perkins' Family Research Council (FRC), where the definition of family is circumscribed, and the research is suspect.

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WINSLOW MYERS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The seemingly intractable discord between Israel and Palestine not only continues to cause enormous suffering and anxiety, but also to reverberate around the planet as a kind of symbol of all our conflicts in what we might call the post-nuclear age.

The mid-20th century superpowers were forced to admit, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, that war at the nuclear level was self-defeating, a victory only for war itself, not for the participants.

Isn't that ultimately true for all wars, large or small? Yet the world, including the superpowers, continues to divide along the Israeli-Palestinian fault-line, almost as if one had to have an adversary to be clear in one's identity.

The conflict has functioned as an iconic symbol of general feelings of fear or powerlessness or injustice, let alone claims to the same territory, that give rise to the best or the worst in us as we humans try to resolve our endless differences.

It is symbolic in a darker and more specific sense for the Arab world, where - even as the Arab Spring flourishes - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has encouraged anti-Semitic stereotypes and still energizes the hatred of extremist groups like Al Quaeda.

Not all conflicts involve sides with equally legitimate aspirations. Few would recognize the legitimacy of drug cartels to dominate and corrupt the governments of whole nations like Mexico or Afghanistan.

And in the United States, there is a growing recognition that some financial institutions have profited obscenely by betting against markets and throwing millions into poverty, avoiding criminal prosecution through their power over elected officials. Even now a new "Arab Spring"-like protest against insufficiently regulated corporate power is growing in many cities across the United States.

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MARK VORPAHL FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Fueled by a long simmering anger over the economic crisis, the continuing enrichment of a tiny corporate elite who brought this crisis on, and the lack of any political voice for the great majority of people, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the nation, mobilizing hundreds of thousands in an undeniable display of strength. The growing involvement of unions in these developments both testifies to how broad this discontent is and its potential power to mobilize and organize millions. The 99 percent have had enough, and growing numbers are now taking to the streets to make an impact.

We are witnessing the birth of a social movement that has the potential to win economic justice. Having only recently exploded onto the scene, there are many directions this movement may take. The only certainty is that, since the conditions that fueled it are not going away any time soon, it is, at the very least, a harbinger of larger struggles to come.

Some have argued that the Occupy Wall Street Movement has a relationship to the Democratic Party similar to the Tea Party's relationship to the Republicans. This is wrong on several counts. The Tea Party and its message was cooked up, funded, and molded by corporate interests such as the Koch brothers. It attempted to mobilize people by tapping into their fears of where the country is going while dressing up a corporate political agenda in populist rags. There was never a doubt that this would eventually strengthen the far right in the Republican Party who quickly identified with the Tea Party's cause.

Relations stand very differently between the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Democratic Party. This movement has no big Wall Street interests channeling funds into their organizing activities. By targeting economic inequality and injustice brought on by Wall Street's rule, the movement has placed itself in direct opposition to the largest financial contributors to and policy makers of the Democratic Party. While Democratic Party politicians may mouth support for some of the issues that have united the movement, any measures they can effectively promote will not come close to adequately addressing working peoples real needs.

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