Truthout - Tuesday 15 November 2011

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Chris Hedges | This Is What Revolution Looks Like
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future."
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New York Lawyers Guild Obtains Temporary Restraining Order Against Brookfield; Protesters Plan Day of Actions
Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet: "As relocated Occupy Wall Street protesters regrouped in Foley Square and prepared to march to Canal Street (with a stop at Bloomberg's press conference on the way) the National Lawyer's Guild was on the move too - filing and obtaining a temporary restraining order against the city and Brookfield - good for several hours until a new hearing on the legality of the eviction."
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Justices Scalia, Thomas Honored at Fundraiser Sponsored by Health Care Reform Opponents
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "A few hours after the Supreme Court justices met last Thursday, November 10, to consider hearing challenges to the national health care overhaul, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were the honored speakers at a fundraiser for a conservative legal group that was sponsored in part by health care reform opponents involved in the litigation."
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Regroup After Morning Raid on Zuccotti Park
J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "In the smallest hours of the morning, with no warning or apparent provocation, hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, some from the department's counterterrorism unit, many in riot gear, demolished thousands of dollars of private property, including a 5,000-volume library; beat and arrested a large number of peacefully protesting citizens, including credentialed journalists and democratically-elected public officials; and in the process, violated not just the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution, a document they are sworn to uphold, but also a court injunction. Tens of thousands watched the live stream as it broadcast protesters scrambling to comply with the instructions of police officers, who declined to issue a timeframe, electing instead to warn and immediately invade."
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Oakland Mayor Jean Quan Admits Cities Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement
Gregg Levine, Capitoilette: "Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC (excerpted on The Takeaway radio program - audio of Quan starts at the 5:30 mark), casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country. 'I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation....' Mayor Quan then rambles about how she 'spoke with protestors in my city' who professed an interest in 'separating from anarchists,' implying that her police action was helping this somehow."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Ohio Governor Allows Fracking in State Parks, and More
In today's On the News segment: There was a massive police crackdown in New York City this morning, the recall effort against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker officially begins today, Alabama set to lose $40 million due to anti-immigration law, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

Smear Campaigns Fuel Shutdowns of Occupations Across Country
Michael Corcoran, Truthout: "A new and vicious smear campaign against the Occupy movement is in full swing. The narrative of this campaign is to portray the movement as a hotbed for violent crime and danger. This false narrative, if it sticks, could prompt more city and town officials across the country to shut down occupations, as the City of New York has attempted to do just this morning, and weaken the movement. This cannot be tolerated."
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Media Coverage Fails to Tell the Personal Stories of Occupy Protesters
Rose Aguilar, Truthout: "Occupy movements in small towns across the United States are multiplying in size, but it's all too rare to hear the voices of the people taking part, even in local media outlets. There is no official site compiling the number of Occupy locations across the country, but according to this Occupy Spreadsheet, there are 38 movements across the state of California and that's not counting camps in large cities."
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This Morning at Occupy Wall Street
Matt Renner, Truthout: "This morning, I watched lower Manhattan turn into a militarized lockdown. The park known as Liberty Square was apparently cleared by force, though I arrived 20 minutes after the police barricades encircled a two-block radius, kicked out all media and prevented all foot traffic on public sidewalks surrounding the park. This was expected. The emergency text message went out at 1:00 AM and read, 'URGENT: Hundreds of police mobilizing around Zuccotti. Eviction in progress!' prompting a mass mobilization of people like me, part-time protesters who signed up to converge on the park for the looming police raid on the physical heart of the Occupy movement."
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Bill McKibben | Obama's Positive Flip and Romney's Negative Flop
Bill McKibben, TomDispatch: "Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama's announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in - and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change."
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Paul Krugman | Patriotism and the Virtues of Hypocrisy
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "Supporting policies that are to your personal financial disadvantage isn’t hypocrisy - it’s civic virtue! But, say the wingnuts, you say that rich people are evil. Actually, no - that’s a right-wing fantasy about what liberals believe. I don’t want to punish the rich, I just want them to pay more taxes."
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Can't Find the Protest Songs? Check Inside the Movement
Ryan Harvey, Even If Your Voice Shakes: "On October 18, The New York Times published the article, 'At the Protests, the Message Lacks a Melody.' In the piece, author James C. McKinley Jr. asks us, 'Where have all the protest songs gone?' Citing Occupy Wall Street and the movement it has inspired, McKinley suggests that we 'have yet to find an anthem'.... As an underground folk musician who regularly performs with other similar musicians, this simplification of what protest music is and where it is found brings me a bitter frustration. McKinley and other journalists covering this issue have consistently ignored the massive underground of contemporary 'protest music' that has been thriving for years."
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Thom Hartmann: The Need to Relocalize Our Economies
Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers: "Communities will see the money spent in their neighborhoods circulate and be reinvested in their own area, building strong and vital towns, counties, and states. And corporations won't be able to intimidate local politicians by suing them personally for violations of the very civil rights laws that were first enacted to protect human beings. An entrepreneurial boom awaits America and the rest of the world."
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Arundhati Roy: Occupy Wall Street Is "So Important Because It Is in the Heart of Empire"
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "Renowned Indian writer and global justice activist Arundhati Roy is preparing to address Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday.... 'What they are doing becomes so important because it is in the heart of empire, or what used to be empire,' Roy said. 'And to criticize and to protest against the model that the rest of the world is aspiring to is a very important and a very serious business. So ... it makes me very, very hopeful that after a long time you're seeing some nascent political, real political anger here.'"
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

It's easy to understand why Bloomberg only takes a token salary of $1 a year as mayor (yes, this is true); he is increasing his wealth (currently valued at $19.5 billion) through his position.

That is just one of the reasons he took the risk of clearing Zuccotti Park out this morning. But it is an important one. As BuzzFlash at Truthout has reported before, Bloomberg is the second-wealthiest man in New York City (after one of the Koch brothers), and the 12th-wealthiest person in America. He made his fortune, as we have noted, with a device that allows the financial "Masters of the Universe" to assess risk in their trading - something that they have done in a ruinous fashion to our economy.

No one is accusing Bloomberg of taking bribes or insider trading. But if Wall Street receives guaranteed subsidies from the government, while it gambles with the money of its customers, Bloomberg enterprises are guaranteed a strong market position for his company and continued revenue enhancement in the billions of dollars while in office. Limited to two terms as mayor, he even got an amendment passed in 2008 to allow him to run for a third term.

Besides, he is in the social and economic world of the Wall Street 1 percent. Hank Paulson and Jon Corzine, who were Goldman Sachs co-chairs not so long ago, and who (Paulson as Bush's Secretary of the Treasury) used taxpayers' money to bail out the southern Manhattan casinos on the one hand - and who is headed to a court date for financial improprieties at his recent brokerage house (Corzine at the now bankrupt and shuttered MF Global) on the other - are Bloomberg's buddies.
Employing a number of public relations strategies to create an excuse for crushing the Occupy Wall Street movement camp, Bloomberg was counting on an outbreak of vandalism and violence to provide an excuse for invading Zuccotti Park. But the protesters remained nonviolent, and he was forced to initially defy a court order, squash freedom of the press and disregard public sentiment when he had the New York Police Department smash the Occupy encampment to erase it from the footprint of democracy.

As BuzzFlash at Truthout noted in the headline for its commentary of November 14, "The 1% Solution in Oakland and NYC Is to Erase Those Who Would Expose Economic Justice."
It's a big gamble for Bloomberg. Lech Walesa started a union movement in Gdansk, Poland, that led to the end of the Berlin Wall. It was a sort of human microphone of justice.

Bloomberg's militarized power play may work, or it may be the match that ignites a populist firestorm that rages beyond the multibillionaire mayor's ability to extinguish it.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

The 1 Percent Solution in Oakland and New York City Is to Erase Those Who Would Expose Economic Justice
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Scalia and Thomas Dine With Health Care Law Challengers as Supreme Court Takes Case
Read the Article at The Los Angeles Times

"Secret Farm Bill" Primed for Passage in Debt Deal
Read the Article at Reuters

You Can't Evict an Idea Whose Time Has Come
Read the Article at Common Dreams

Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
Read the Article at The Nation

Herman Cain Loses the Muslims He Apologized to
Read the Article at Talking Points Memo

The Evictions Won't Stand: Make November 17 a Day of National Occupation
Read the Article at Campaign for America’s Future

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