Friday, October 21, 2011

Occupy Wall Street, Part 4: More Articles, Some Video

Dylan Ratigan, "Constitutional Moments: The People's Voice," The Huffington Post, 14 October 2011.

Jeffrey Sachs, "Message to Wall Street," The Huffington Post, 17 October 2011.

Glen Greenwald, "What Are Those OWS People So Angry About?," Salon.com, 17 October 2011.
Greenwald is the author of the forthcoming book: With Liberty and Justice For Some.

Anne Applebaum, "Is the Occupy Movement Anti-Democratic?," Slate.com, 17 October 2011.
How can we explain the kind of thinking that's on display in this article? It is well know that devotion to ideology can make people say and do stupid things. But I think it's more than just ideology in this case: if the people were to regain control of their government (from the banks and other corporations that now control it) and began to investigate and prosecute economic crimes, the people's government might also have the power and fortitude to prosecute war crimes, and that is something the neo-conservatives and their puppets must fear. So I'd expect to hear more obfuscatory nonsense from the neocon sympathizers.
For more right-wing ideologists see Pajamas Media.

Carol Smith, "A Victory for #OccupyWallStreet in the Most Unlikely of Places?," naked capitalism, 18 October 2011.

Yves Smith, "Tom Ferguson: Congress is a 'Coin Operated Stalemate Machine'," naked capitalism, 18 October 2011.
One of the sources of the U.S.'s problem is a systemically corrupt political system. Exposing and understanding the mechanics of the corruption is very helpful. Thomas Ferguson shows how the corruption works in the U.S. Congress.

James Rickards, "Jim Rickards’ First Hand Account of Occupy Wall Street Protest: Shine a Light," King World News, 14 October 2011.
Rickards is the author of the forthcoming book: Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.

David Graeber, "On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet," naked capitalism, 19 October 2011.
Graeber is the author of the recently published book: Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

Russ, "Underlying Ideology of the 99," Volatility, 12 October 2011.

RiverDaughter, "OccupyWallStreet: We have been starving the wrong beast," The Confluence, 17 October 2011.

Bureau of Public Secrets, "The Awakening in America," Bureau of Public Secrets, 15 October 2011.

Chris Hedges, Interview at Times Square NYC, OccupyNYTV, 15 October 2011.
Also posted at MaxKeiser.com, 19 October 2011.
Hedges makes several notable comments in this brief interview, including: on the nature of social movements; on the failures of U.S. establishment leaders.
See also the OccupyNYTV channel at YouTube.
A talk by Chris Hedges last year: "Death of the Liberal Class", 17 October 2010.

Keith Boykin, "Everything the Media Told You About Occupy Wall Street Is Wrong," The Huffington Post, 19 October 2011.

Brandon Smith, "Sausage the Riot Dog Coming to America?," Zero Hedge, 10 October 2011.

Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook, "Corporations are not people: We hold these truths to be self-evident...," Waging Nonviolence, 11 October 2011.

Phil Rockstroh, "Punching a Hole in Bubbles of Denial and Addiction: Late Capitalism and Its Discontents of the American Autumn," CommonDreams.org, 13 October 2011.
Unusually poetic and philosophical expression of the sensibility behind movements like Occupy Wall Street.

"American Autumn," Adbusters #98, Nov/Dec 2011.

Ron Boyer, "'American Autumn' Will Depend on People, Not Parties," Truthout, 26 September 2011.
An interview with Margaret Flowers of October2011.org.

Michel Chossudovsky, "Occupy Wall Street and 'The American Autumn': Is It a 'Colored Revolution'? Part I," Global Research, 13 October 2011.

Amy Goodman, "Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud," Democracy Now!, 19 October 2011.

Andy Kroll, "How Occupy Wall Street Really Got Started," Mother Jones, 17 October 2011.

Charles Hugh Smith, "Semi-Random Notes on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement," Of Two Minds, 20 October 2011.


A Sampling of Right-Wingers:

Jonah Goldberg, "Sorting Out the ‘Extremists’: The difference between Wall Street protestors and the Tea Party," National Review Online, 07 October 2011.

Mark Steyn, "American Autumn: The zombie youth 'occupying' Wall Street are contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts," National Review Online, 08 October 2011.

Mark Steyn, "Crisis of Decadence: A society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance for only so long," National Review Online, 15 October 2011.

Victor Davis Hanson, "Railing Against Reality: What are the root causes of the multifaceted unrest in the Western world?," National Review Online, 20 October 2011.

My summary: There is a uniform unwillingness or inability among the right-wingers to recognize the variety of issues that mobilize Organize Wall Street but fall outside the right-wing cliches and themes they have used for decades to attack their political opponents. For example, corporate fraud, government corruption, and the active participation of the corrupt two-party political duopoly in enabling corporate fraud are absent from their analysis.

But I do commend Steyn for recognizing the serious problem of student debt. Why would a society impose a huge debt burden on people seeking higher education? Christopher Newfield has addressed some of this problem in Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class (2008; 2011).