"Naomi Klein" - The Most Important Thing in the World Now

Published on Friday, October 7, 2011 by The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now

by Naomi Klein

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

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"Matt Taibbi" - The Next Big Bank Bailout?

Published on Thursday, October 6, 2011 by Rolling Stone

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/attorneys-general-settlement-the-next-big-bank-bailout-20111005

by Matt Taibbi

Amidst all the bad news coming out of Wall Street and the economy, here’s something good: California has backed out of the talks for the long-awaited foreclosure settlement, now making it far from likely that the so-called “Attorneys General” deal will happen anytime soon.

A foreclosure sign hangs on a fence in front of a foreclosed home in Richmond, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent a letter to state and federal regulators explaining that she pulled out because the proposed settlement amount for banks guilty of bad securitization practices leading up to the mortgage crisis – said to be in the $20 billion range – was too small. From Business Week:

Harris says in a letter to state and federal negotiators that the pending settlement is "inadequate" and gives bank officials too much immunity.

I’m convinced that the deal will eventually go through, however, after some further concessions are made. Certainly the absence of both New York (whose Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gamely started this mess by refusing to sign on or abandon his own investigation into corrupt securitization practices) and California will make it difficult for the banks to do any kind of a deal. But there is such an awesome amount of political will to get this deal done in Washington that it almost has to happen before the presidential election season really gets going.

If it does get done, expect a great deal of public debate over whether or not the size of the settlement was sufficient. Did the banks pay enough? Should they have paid ten billion more? Twenty? Even I engaged in a little bit of that some weeks ago.

But if and when that debate takes place, it will actually obscure the real issue, because this settlement is not about getting money from the banks. The deal being contemplated is actually the opposite: a giant bailout.

In fact, any federal foreclosure settlement along the lines of what’s been proposed will amount to a last round of post-2008-crisis bailouts. I talked to one foreclosure activist over the weekend who put it this way: “[The AG settlement] will be a bigger bailout than TARP.”

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"Robert Parry" - Reagan's "Greed Is Good" Folly

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Reagan-s-Greed-Is-Good-F-by-Robert-Parry-111005-931.html

October 5, 2011

By Robert Parry

So, it turns out that greed isn't good after all -- at least not for the vast majority of the American people. But this is a lesson that many U.S. opinion leaders still resist.

For the past three decades -- since Ronald Reagan's Republican landslide in 1980 -- the United States has undertaken arguably the most destructive social experiment in American history, the incentivizing of greed among the rich by halving their top marginal tax rates.

The idea -- once famously sketched out by right-wing economist Arthur Laffer on a napkin -- was to slash the tax rates on the rich to spur a "supply side" bonanza of economic growth and higher tax revenues for the government.

Before becoming Reagan's vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush labeled this tax strategy "voodoo economics," and Reagan's first budget director David Stockman warned that, without severe spending cuts, it could create a sea of red ink as far as the eye could see.

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"David Swanson" - What's Missing, Non-Electoral Politics

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-s-Missing-Non-Electo-by-David-Swanson-111004-128.html

October 4, 2011 By David Swanson Lately, the phrase "public servants" has struck me as ironic, not because government officials fail to serve the public, but because much of the public serves them.  The public is the servants.  Activist groups and individuals devote themselves to bettering the fortunes of political parties or politicians, at the expense of pressuring government officials to represent public demands. Nobody favors eliminating elections, and nobody favors eliminating activism.  But there are those who cannot see how prioritizing money-marinated, gerrymandered, cable-news-controlled, unverifiable elections will reverse the train wreck in progress.  And there are those who cannot see what it would mean to engage in activism that wasn't aimed at promoting electoral victories. Let me try to explain.  Richard Nixon gave us the EPA.  Barack Obama is giving us a tar sands pipeline, lower air standards, and more nuclear power.  George W. Bush took the trouble to lie to Congress when starting wars. Barack Obama goes out of his way to not consult Congress at all.  Richard Nixon was impeached.  George W. Bush was not.  The reasons for these differences have nothing to do with the character or upbringing of the presidents, and everything to do with public pressure, and with the communications and -- yes -- electoral systems through which public pressure can be brought to bear.  Nixon didn't care more deeply about future generations than Barack Obama.  Nixon faced public pressure, in the streets, in the suites, in the news, and in the halls of Congress. But ultimately, the purpose of public pressure must be to threaten electoral defeat, right?  Must it?

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"Jim Hightower" - Something Big Is Happening -- Occupy Together

By Jim Hightower

http://www.nationofchange.org/something-big-happening-occupy-together-1317788275

To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?"

A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street " movement — but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what's "happening here," they've resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street's own neighborhood.

In a September article, Bellafante dismissed the young people's effort as "fractured and airy," calling it a "carnival" in an "intellectual vacuum." Their cause is so "diffuse and leaderless," she wrote, that its purpose is "virtually impossible to decipher." No wonder, she concluded, that participation in the movement is "dwindling."

Whew — so snide! Yet, so wrong.

While the establishment is befuddled by the plethora of issues and slogans within the protest, confused by the absence of hierarchical order and put off by its festive spirit, that's their problem. The 20- and 30-somethings who are driving this movement know what they're doing and are far more organized (but much differently organized) than their snarky critics seem able to comprehend.

It's silly to say that the protestors' purpose is indecipherable. Hello — they're encamped next door to Wall Street. Isn't that a clue? Their cause is the same as the one boiling in the guts of America's workaday majority: Stop the gross greed of financial and corporate elites, and expel a political class that's so corrupted by the money of those wealthy elites that it has turned its back on the middle class and the poor.

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"Jim Hightower" - It's time to name the tea party politicians (and their sponsors)--and call them out

By Jim Hightower

In just one year, the tea party went from hating billionaires to fronting for them.

As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But -- good God! -- the petulant pettiness and corporate servility of Congress' tea party Republicans makes Obama's timidity seem like a chapter from Profiles In Courage.

America has BIG needs right now -- a jobs crisis, housing crisis, infrastructure crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis, middle-class crisis, democracy crisis. But they can't even be addressed because tea party ravers in the House, joined there by a gaggle of old school right-wingers, keep throwing hissy fits over far-out ideological gimcrackery.

Our problem in Washington really comes down to this: We have too many 5-watt bulbs in 100-watt sockets. Take, for example, the astonishing clamoring by tea party congress critters to pass a light bulb bill. Yes, light bulbs! In July, these addle-brained lawmakers actually spent time, energy, and their credibility on stopping the horrible scourge of energy efficient bulbs from spreading across the country.

This non-issue was literally drummed up by the billionaire Koch brothers (who, by the way, are in the dirty energy business and profit if you have to use more of it to light your home). During the past couple of years, various Koch front groups have been shrieking that nanny-state Democrats have banned Thomas Edison's old, glowing 100-watt incandescent globes. As of next January 1, they wailed, sales of Edison's marvel will be outlawed, replaced by the cold glare emitted by spiral, fluorescent bulbs.

Only, none of that is true. There is no ban, just a new standard for all bulbs to consume less energy. And it was not set by Democrats, but by a Republican-sponsored law signed in 2007 by George W. Bush. Furthermore, the light bulb industry backed the new efficiency standard. "Everyone supported it," says a top executive of bulb-maker Philips. So did Edison's descendants, who issued a simple statement that old Tom himself could've written: "Technology changes. Embrace it."

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"Reuters" - Afghans Hold Anti-U.S. Rally on Eve of War Anniversary

Published on Thursday, October 6, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/06

Hundreds of Afghans marched through Kabul on Thursday, the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, to condemn the United States as occupiers and demand the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops.

About 300 men and women gathered early in the morning with placards and banners accusing the United States of "massacring" civilians while denouncing President Hamid Karzai as a puppet subservient to Washington.

"Occupation - atrocities - brutality," read one sign, held aloft by two women with scarves covering their head and face.

"No to occupation" said another placard, as a U.S. flag was set on fire. Another banner featured a caricature of Karzai as a glove puppet holding a pen and signing a document entitled "promises to the USA."

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"Staff Writers" - Tutu slams S.Africa over Dalai Lama visa row

by Staff Writers
Cape Town (AFP) Oct 4, 2011

http://www.sinodaily.com/reports/Tutu_slams_SAfrica_over_Dalai_Lama_visa_row_999.html

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Tuesday the South African government was worse than its apartheid predecessor and warned he would pray for its downfall after it dithered over a visa for the Dalai Lama.

Anti-apartheid crusader Tutu invited his longtime friend and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner to give an inaugural peace lecture as part of Tutu's 80th birthday celebrations in Cape Town this week.

But the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader cancelled his trip because he had not yet received a visa.

In response, Tutu, widely seen as South Africa's conscience keeper, called a nationally televised news conference and lambasted President Jacob Zuma.

"When we used to apply for passports from the apartheid government, we never knew until the last moment what the decision was," Tutu said.

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"Robert Scheer" - What Do They Want? Justice

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_do_they_want_justice_20111006/

Posted on Oct 6, 2011

By Robert Scheer

How can anyone possessed of the faintest sense of social justice not thrill to the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading throughout the country? One need not be religiously doctrinaire to recognize this as a “come to Jesus moment” when the money-changers stand exposed and the victims of their avarice are at long last offered succor.

Not that any of the protesters have gone so far as to overturn the tables of stockbrokers or whip them with cords in imitation of the cleansing of the temple, but the rhetoric of accountability is compelling. “I think a good deal of the bankers should be in jail,” one protester told New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. That prospect has evidently aroused concern in an industry that has largely managed to escape judicial opprobrium. 

“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the CEO of a major bank asked Sorkin. “We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all this. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”

It should pose a threat, not because peaceful demonstrators will suddenly morph into vigilantes fatally damaging their cause with violent action, but rather because government prosecutors should fulfill their obligation to pursue justice and incarcerate some of the obvious perps. As Sorkin conceded, in one of the rare instances of the business press attempting to understand the protesters: “the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.”

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"Edward Miller" - Speculation in Agricultural Commodities, Driving up the Price of Food Worldwide and plunging Millions into Hunger

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26941

By Edward Miller

Global Research, October 5, 2011

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has again delayed the introduction of position limits required under the Dodd-Frank Act. These limits are intended to prevent speculation in (among other things) agricultural commodities, speculation which, many critics argue, have driven up the price of food worldwide and plunged millions into hunger.

In late 2006, the price of food and other commodities began rising precipitately, continuing throughout 2007 and peaking in 2008. Millions were cast below the poverty line and food riots erupted across the developing world, from Haiti to Mozambique. While analysts initially framed the crisis in terms of market fundamentals (such as rising population, increased demand for resource-intensive food, declining stockpiles, biofuel and agricultural subsidies, and crop shortfalls from natural disasters), a growing number of experts have tied the massive spikes to financial intermediation. As economist Jayati Ghosh explains:

“It is now quite widely acknowledged that financial speculation was the major factor behind the sharp price rise of many primary commodities , including agricultural items over the past year ... Even recent research from the World Bank (Bafis and Haniotis 2010) recognizes the role played by the “financialisation of commodities” in the price surges and declines, and notes that price variability has overwhelmed price trends for important commodities.”

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