Sunday, October 16, 2011

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:58:38

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:58:38

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:58:38 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Consensus (Occupy Wall Street)
www.youtube.com
A look into the "HOW" of the Occupy Wall Street movement: The consensus process. The community of occupiers at Liberty Plaza have sparked the process of buil...

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:58:21 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


#CampOutChi - Chicago Occupies The Horse - 10/15-10/16

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:58:09 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Peace March October 15, 2011

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:57:58 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Wall Photos
Madrid Spain.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:57:50 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком



here's a reality check for the haters...

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:57:43 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


AS IT'S HAPPENING - Occupy Times Square - approx 5:40pm - 10.15.11
www.youtube.com
Occupy Times Square 2

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:57:26 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


‫מסיבת הזעם‬
www.youtube.com
15o

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:57:11 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


The Whole World Is Watching | Occupy Berlin 15.10.11
www.youtube.com
Occupy Berlin. Video clips from 15.10.11 in Berlin Germany. A peaceful demonstration gets rowdy when German Police begin harassing the protestors. Stealing b...

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:56:58 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Matthew Hensman's Photos

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:56:40 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


OCCUPY WALL STREET: 10-15-11 ***EPIC WIN --TIMES SQUARE OCCUPIED*** (AERIAL SHOT)
www.youtube.com
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:55:50 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:54:24 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


October 2011 | Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed
www.october2011.org
October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions. Read more.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:43:37 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Occupy Dallas March from Goldman Sachs 10-15-2011
www.youtube.com
Occupy Dallas during their march back in solidarity with OccupyTogether.org the day the movement went global.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:42:18 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Wall Photos
Occupy Toronto!!!

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:38:40 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Wall Photos

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:36:27 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


OCCUPY WALL STREET: 10-15-11 ***EPIC WIN --TIMES SQUARE OCCUPIED*** (AERIAL SHOT)
www.youtube.com
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎20:29:44 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Global protests: Occupy the London Stock Exchange takes over the City
www.dailymail.co.uk
Thousands have descended on the area known as the Square Mile - under the banner 'Occupy the Stock Exchange' - for the 'peaceful protest' against the global financial system.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎19:12:53 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Wall Photos

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:59:12 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Wall Photos
Brooklyn Stand Up

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:10:40 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: www.youtube.com: Violent protests break out in Rome | Protest.
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
Oct. 15 - Demonstrators in Rome set fire to cars and smash windows during a protest in the Italian capital. Rough cut (no reporter narration)

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:10:19 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Global Day of Rage peaceful for most
www.reuters.com
LONDON (Reuters) - The hangover from a global Day of Rage against bankers and politicians turned out to be a mild one for most on Sunday, after protests that were peaceful everywhere but Italy.Cities

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:09:37 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: "PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova Protesters Against Wall S
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/15/11

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:08:38 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Global Day of Rage peaceful for most
www.reuters.com
LONDON (Reuters) - The hangover from a global Day of Rage against bankers and politicians turned out to be a mild one for most on Sunday, after protests that were peaceful everywhere but Italy.Cities

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:08:08 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: Songs & Videos's Facebook Wall - 16 октября 2011 г., 10...
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
Revolution - The Beatles www.youtube.com This is just a slideshow of pictures of The Beatles and one of my favorite The Beatles songs, Revolution, is played throughout the whole video. Hope you like...

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:06:41 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: Russia and The West's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., ...
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
euronews the network - Греческая трагедия: развязка близка? www.youtube.com http://ru.euronews.net/ В этом выпуске Network - о европейском долговом кризисе. Насколько опасен греческий план экономии? Не пора ли Греции объявить дефолт?

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:05:23 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: "PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova The New York Times - Brea
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
WASHINGTON — President Obama wants United Nations inspectors to release intelligence showing that Iran’s nuclear program is designing and experimenting with weapons technology.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:04:23 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


RUSSIA and THE WEST - РОССИЯ и ЗАПАД: Russia and The West's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., ...
east-and-west-org.blogspot.com
"PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia via global.nytimes.com on 10/16/11 To Isolate Iran, U.S. Presses Inspectors on Nuclear Data By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK LANDLER WASHINGTON — President Obama wants United Nations inspectors to release int...

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎18:02:35 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


The Brains Behind
www.forbes.com
Kalle Lasn talks to Forbes writer Kenneth Rapoza about where Occupy Wall Street might be heading next, and what its movement adherents would like to see from the G20 later this month.

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash2/273606_100002807160383_756515252_q.jpg
Mike Nova
A Festival of Rage A Festival of Rage - New Act of World Political Drama and Acting Out. Or a carefully managed act of political displacement. “Wanna occupy Wall Street”? Get a job there. Any other “occupation” will just turn it into an old computers shop. Eat your “milquetoast”. However, this does not save us from an eternal question: is the system really “fair”? And does it really work properly? Political and economic systems evolve “naturally”, “organically”, which provides them with stability and efficiency. But purposeful attempts to change them are also a part of this “natural process”. Mike Nova

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:34:02 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


Occupy Brooklyn
WE ARE THE 99% and SO ARE YOU!!!! BROOKLYN! We have to get together and represent COLLECTIVELY!! go to www.occupybrooklyn.org They need OUR help! Please join me to make a DIFFERENCE TOGETHER! www.occupybrooklyn.org www.occupywallst.org Folllow us on Twitter: http://www.TWITTER.com/occupyBKNY Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/occupybrooklyn

‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:13:34 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - LinksСтатья целиком


OPEN FORUM: Debt, Enslavement and Capital Punishment
Thursday, October 20 at 11:00am

Mike Nova

View full profile

"PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova The Brains Behind 'Occupy Wall Street' - Forbes via www.forbes.com on 10/16/11 Meet the second most evilest man in the world (after George Soros). This isn’t the 60s. And it isn’t the pre-Iraq War protests either. Occupy Wall Street, supposedly, is different. It has no leader. It has no political action committee behind it.

"PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova

The Brains Behind 'Occupy Wall Street' - Forbes

via www.forbes.com on 10/16/11

Meet the second most evilest man in the world (after George Soros).

This isn’t the 60s. And it isn’t the pre-Iraq War protests either. Occupy Wall Street, supposedly, is different. It has no leader. It has no political action committee behind it. One can argue that the protests against Wall Street this month really started in Tunisia. That’s where the idea came from. But the guys who took that Arab movement and ran with it are based in Vancouver.

Kalle Lasn, 69, is their quasi leader. He’s the publisher and editor of Adbusters magazine. It’s a small, non-influential critical and artsy magazine with a decent following of around 90,000 who call themselves “culture jammers”. Occupy Wall Street began in the conference rooms at that Vancouver mag.

I spoke with Lasn in July, right after the new edition of Adbusters hit the news stands with the now famous image of a ballerina balancing on the Wall Street bull. Above her head read the Twitter hashtag #OccupyWallStreet. Lasn didn’t know what this movement would become. Just two and a half short months later, it’s the talk on The Talk, The View and every major news channel.

I spoke with him again this afternoon about this weekend’s European wide protest, the G-20 and a worldwide Robin Hood tax.

Kenneth R: The Washington Post calls you the leader of Occupy Wall Street. What do you make of that?

Kalle L: This is a leaderless movement. But the founding of the idea came out of lots of brainstorming here among our staff editors, photographers, freelancers and people on our list-serve. Back in the summer we were all talking about what we were going to do next with the magazine and we were all inspired by what happened in Tunisia and thought that America was ripe for this type of rage. We put feelers out on our forums. So it was relatively recent, in June, when we came up with this idea and launched the hashtag in mid-July with the magazine and then it just took off. Once that issue was published, we started putting out tactical briefings to our list serve.

Kalle is a man of the world, so it is no surprise to him or his network of culture jammers, that a Wall Street protest was conceived far away in Vancouver, Canada. That’s fairly close to the site where another surprising protest in U.S. history took place. The 1995 anti-globalization protests caught everyone by surprise in Seattle during the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization. Back then, the model was to attack corporate control over the public sphere like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male and those who followed behind in a pack. The new model has evolved from a pack…to a swarm. Kalle gets inquiries and emails about Occupy Wall Street from London to Shanghai, but he’s not ringing his hands and sticking pins in a wall-sized map about where his next diabolical plan against capitalism will take shape.

Kalle was born in Estonia and moved to Australia when he was 7. He hit Canada in his 30s and has been in Vancouver ever since. He traveled to the U.S. for a year, back in the 1960s. We joked a little tongue in cheek. (This is me getting my Fox on.)

KR: Of course, you did. You were a hippy and you were radicalized in San Francisco.

KL: I went to a Jimi Hendrix concert.

KR: See.

KL: But it wasn’t the concert that radicalized me. I remember the people there were so alive. The young people in Occupy Wall Street are a lot like that.

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The Brains Behind 'Occupy Wall Street' - Forbes

via www.forbes.com on 10/16/11

ge 2 of 3

KR: Seriously? Everyone thinks their movement is the one to really change things.

KL: You can’t think too rationally about this. These movements are best understood years after they are gone. We have a long history of movements that have just fizzled out, but I think this time it’s different. This movement has an edge. First, it is a global moment. We are all living in dire times. We are all facing major tipping points around the world. We are faced with a political crisis in the U.S. and concern that the U.S., with no help from Washington, is now in irreversible decline. The economy is surely in decline. So people see this, young people see this, and they wonder what their future holds for them given those circumstances. The future doesn’t compute. The backbone of the movement that helped end the Vietnam war was the fact that young people were faced with the draft. Their bodies were on the line. They could get scooped up from wherever they were and sent to Vietnam to killed by the Viet Cong. When your future is on the line, when your kids’ future is on the line, people will fight for what they want. Occupy Wall Street says our future is on the line. Is there a chance that this will all fizzle out? Yes, but I think over time we will pull it off and are getting our point across.

KR: Who’s on your side in DC?

KL: Nobody is on our side in DC. We don’t want to hop into bed with anyone. We don’t mind Al Gore saying ‘Hey, I like you guys’, that’s fine with us. But we are not going to hop into bed with the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party did with the Republicans. Once you do that, you’re dead. You align yourself with existing power players. The Tea Party got a few people elected, had a few protests, but that’s it. Now it’s our turn.

KR: Talk about divide and conquer. We have a long history of that in the West, when public movements are overthrown by splitting the public up on the issue. Should Occupy Wall Street guys and Tea Party guys join forces?

KL: Forget divide and conquer. It’s too soon for that. And it may happen. I don’t know. The good thing about the Tea Party is that deep down in their guts they understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with our system. But they want to recapture the past when there is no going back. Their target is the government. Our target is the people who run the government: corporations and Wall Street. If some Tea Party people want to come out and protest, please come. They know we have to take away some of the powers the financial markets and speculators have over our system. They know that we have to make money less important in politics or this democracy is in very big trouble.

KR: Where is this all going?

KL: We don’t know. We will see what happens in Europe this weekend. Social movements there have been planning protests for Saturday. We could have some Occupy Wall Street people involved in that, as well. Then on Oct. 29th we are thinking about protesting in Paris ahead of the G-20 meeting. Look, people of all ages are looking at their political leaders, they are looking at Wall Street or the London Stock Exchange and they are saying, ‘fuck you guys. You don’t know what you are doing. All you can talk about is stimulus and cuts and should we provide stimulus here or should we provide stimulus there.’ It doesn’t address the problem the financial sector has over our lives.

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The Brains Behind 'Occupy Wall Street' - Forbes

via www.forbes.com on 10/16/11

Page 3 of 3

KR: What should they do?

KL: We would like to see a 1% Robin Hood tax on all financial transactions. We want to push for that. We want to kill some of the global casino and one way to do that is to slow down the fast money, the derivatives markets, the credit default swaps and exotic financial products that wiped us out in 2008; a way to slow that market is with a tax.

KR: This is going from being a national conversation to a global conversation.

KL: Lots of people are coming to our website from outside the U.S. and Canada. It is already a global conversation.

Kalle seems younger than his years let on. He’s as alive as the young protesters he’s talking about. So as a former reader of Adbusters, I had to have some fun with Kalle in the last few minutes of our call.

KR: Okay, I’m looking through an old Adbusters magazine and see that George Soros is on your editorial board. He must tell you what to write and give you money for all of this. Is he your main funder?

KL: Sadly, George Soros is not on our editorial board.

KR: He must be a subscriber and donor.

KL: I don’t know if he is a subscriber. I know he is not on the board. He has never sent us any money, though I wish he would. I liked a few of his books, though.

KR: When are you going to do an Occupy K Street?

KL: We’ll have to talk about that one.

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Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., &rlm

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., &rlm

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., &rlm
Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41 ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash2/273606_100002807160383_756515252_q.jpg Mike Nova A Festival of Rage A Festival of Rage - New Act of World Political Drama and Acting Out....

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., 17:3...

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall 16 октября 2011 г., 17:35:41

Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41
Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links's Facebook Wall ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41 ‎16 ‎октября ‎2011 ‎г., ‏‎17:35:41 | Occupy Wall Street - News Topic - Links https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash2/273606_100002807160383_756515252_q.jpg Mike Nova A Festival of Rage A Festival of Rage - New Act of World Political Drama and Acting Out....

17 октября, вечером

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

17 октября, вечером
17 октября, вечером
http://arkhangelsky.livejournal.com/209831.htmlЗавтра начнется показ нового докфильма Александра Архангельского "Жара" (про религиозных диссидентов 70-80-х). Перед показом будет его же программа "Тем временем", где я немного участвую (вместе с Сергеем Кравцом, Андреем Десницким и др.).

Syrian Opponent Says AL Not Able to Suspend Syria's Membership - CRIENGLISH.com

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

Syrian Opponent Says AL Not Able to Suspend Syria's Membership - CRIENGLISH.com
Syrian Opponent Says AL Not Able to Suspend Syria's Membership - CRIENGLISH.com
Syrian Opponent Says AL Not Able to Suspend Syria's MembershipCRIENGLISH.comJamil was one of a seven-man delegation from the moderate Syrian opposition that headed to the Russian capital of Moscow last week to promote for the demands of the Syrian opposition that favors dialogue over any other solution to the seven-month-old ...and more »

Can Russia Ever Change? - Wall Street Journal

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

Can Russia Ever Change? - Wall Street Journal
Can Russia Ever Change? - Wall Street Journal
Can Russia Ever Change?Wall Street JournalThe question is whether Russian society will have the strength and will to seize their opportunity as Putinism runs its course. Mr. Egiazaryan is a member of Russia's outgoing State Duma and is currently living in the United States out of fear for his ...and more »

7 недель до выборов в Госдуму

via Russian Politics - Российская Политика's Facebook Wall by Russian Politics - Российская Политика on 10/16/11

7 недель до выборов в Госдуму
7 недель до выборов в Госдуму
5 октября Центризбирком (ЦИК) завершил заверение партийных списков (эту процедуру успешно прошли все семь партий) и в тот же день приступил к новому этапу избирательной кампании — регистрации кандидатов. Первой этой чести удостоилась ЛДПР. Как парламентской партии ей не требовалось собирать подписи в свою поддержку, но и без подписей члены комиссии нашли к чему придраться.

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"PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova (title unknown) via A List's Facebook Wall by A List on 10/16/11 Occupy Wall Street protesters attacked and arrested at Times Square www.youtube.com Throngs of participants with the Occupy Wall Street movement marched to Times Square in New York City on October 15 in a mass protest. Once there, however, t...

"PERISCOPE - ПЕРИСКОП" via Mike Nova

(title unknown)

via A List's Facebook Wall by A List on 10/16/11


Occupy Wall Street protesters attacked and arrested at Times Square
www.youtube.com
Throngs of participants with the Occupy Wall Street movement marched to Times Square in New York City on October 15 in a mass protest. Once there, however, t...

Occupy Wall Street tries to maintain message - video | World news | guardian.co.uk

via www.guardian.co.uk on 10/16/11

Demonstrators aim to reach those who 'freeload' at protests on day 24 of a grassroots movement that has spread through the country, now reaching 70 cities

The Social Contract - NYTimes.com

via www.nytimes.com on 10/16/11

The New York Times

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  • September 22, 2011

    The Social Contract

    By PAUL KRUGMAN

    This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.”

    It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war.

    As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

    Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

    So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

    To be fair, there is argument about the extent to which government policy was responsible for the spectacular disparity in income growth. What we know for sure, however, is that policy has consistently tilted to the advantage of the wealthy as opposed to the middle class.

    Some of the most important aspects of that tilt involved such things as the sustained attack on organized labor and financial deregulation, which created huge fortunes even as it paved the way for economic disaster. For today, however, let’s focus just on taxes.

    The budget office’s numbers show that the federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes, which itself runs counter to the rhetoric you hear from the usual suspects. But that burden has fallen much more, as a percentage of income, for the wealthy. Partly this reflects big cuts in top income tax rates, but, beyond that, there has been a major shift of taxation away from wealth and toward work: tax rates on corporate profits, capital gains and dividends have all fallen, while the payroll tax — the main tax paid by most workers — has gone up.

    And one consequence of the shift of taxation away from wealth and toward work is the creation of many situations in which — just as Warren Buffett and Mr. Obama say — people with multimillion-dollar incomes, who typically derive much of that income from capital gains and other sources that face low taxes, end up paying a lower overall tax rate than middle-class workers. And we’re not talking about a few exceptional cases.

    According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, one-fourth of those with incomes of more than $1 million a year pay income and payroll tax of 12.6 percent of their income or less, putting their tax burden below that of many in the middle class.

    Now, I know how the right will respond to these facts: with misleading statistics and dubious moral claims.

    On one side, we have the claim that the rising share of taxes paid by the rich shows that their burden is rising, not falling. To point out the obvious, the rich are paying more taxes because they’re much richer than they used to be. When middle-class incomes barely grow while the incomes of the wealthiest rise by a factor of six, how could the tax share of the rich not go up, even if their tax rate is falling?

    On the other side, we have the claim that the rich have the right to keep their money — which misses the point that all of us live in and benefit from being part of a larger society.

    Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

    Which brings us back to those cries of “class warfare.”

    Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat.

    Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you’re wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.

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    Economic Bleeding Cure - NYTimes.com

    via www.nytimes.com on 10/16/11

    The New York Times

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  • September 18, 2011

    The Bleeding Cure

    By PAUL KRUGMAN

    Doctors used to believe that by draining a patient’s blood they could purge the evil “humors” that were thought to cause disease. In reality, of course, all their bloodletting did was make the patient weaker, and more likely to succumb.

    Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy. Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do. And economic bloodletting isn’t just inflicting vast pain; it’s starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects.

    Some background: For the past year and a half, policy discourse in both Europe and the United States has been dominated by calls for fiscal austerity. By slashing spending and reducing deficits, we were told, nations could restore confidence and drive economic revival.

    And the austerity has been real. In Europe, troubled nations like Greece and Ireland have imposed savage cuts, even as stronger nations have imposed milder austerity programs of their own. In the United States, the modest federal stimulus of 2009 has faded out, while state and local governments have slashed their budgets, so that over all we’ve had a de facto move toward austerity not so different from Europe’s.

    Strange to say, however, confidence hasn’t surged. Somehow, businesses and consumers seem much more concerned about the lack of customers and jobs, respectively, than they are reassured by the fiscal righteousness of their governments. And growth seems to be stalling, while unemployment remains disastrously high on both sides of the Atlantic.

    But, say apologists for the bad results so far, shouldn’t we be focused on the long run rather than short-run pain? Actually, no: the economy needs real help now, not hypothetical payoffs a decade from now. In any case, evidence is starting to emerge that the economy’s “short run” troubles — now in their fourth year, and being made worse by the focus on austerity — are taking a toll on its long-run prospects as well.

    Consider, in particular, what is happening to America’s manufacturing base. In normal times manufacturing capacity rises 2 or 3 percent every year. But faced with a persistently weak economy, industry has been reducing, not increasing, its productive capacity. At this point, according to Federal Reserve estimates, manufacturing capacity is almost 5 percent lower than it was in December 2007.

    What this means is that if and when a real recovery finally gets going, the economy will run into capacity constraints and production bottlenecks much sooner than it should. That is, the weak economy, which is partly the result of budget-cutting, is hurting the future as well as the present.

    Furthermore, the decline in manufacturing capacity is probably only the beginning of the bad news. Similar cuts in capacity will probably take place in the service sector — indeed, they may already be taking place. And with long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression, there is a real risk that many of the unemployed will come to be seen as unemployable.

    Oh, and the brunt of those cuts in public spending is falling on education. Somehow, laying off hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers doesn’t seem like a good way to win the future.

    In fact, when you combine the growing evidence that fiscal austerity is reducing our future prospects with the very low interest rates on U.S. government debt, it’s hard to avoid a startling conclusion: budget austerity may well be counterproductive even from a purely fiscal point of view, because lower future growth means lower tax receipts.

    What should be happening? The answer is that we need a major push to get the economy moving, not at some future date, but right now. For the time being we need more, not less, government spending, supported by aggressively expansionary policies from the Federal Reserve and its counterparts abroad. And it’s not just pointy-headed economists saying this; business leaders like Google’s Eric Schmidt are saying the same thing, and the bond market, by buying U.S. debt at such low interest rates, is in effect pleading for a more expansionary policy.

    And to be fair, some policy players seem to get it. President Obama’s new jobs plan is a step in the right direction, while some board members of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England — though not, sad to say, the European Central Bank — have been calling for much more growth-oriented policies.

    What we really need, however, is to convince a substantial number of people with political power or influence that they’ve spent the last year and a half going in exactly the wrong direction, and that they need to make a U-turn.

    It’s not going to be easy. But until that U-turn happens, the bleeding — which is making our economy weaker now, and undermining its future at the same time — will continue.

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    Protesters Against Wall Street - NYTimes.com

    via www.nytimes.com on 10/16/11

    The New York Times

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  • October 8, 2011

    Protesters Against Wall Street

    As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

    At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.

    The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings — the very definition of downward mobility.

    The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.

    The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.

    Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

    When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

    That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

    Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.

    Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.

    No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

    It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

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    Occupy Wall Street's 'Political Disobedience' - NYTimes.com

    via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com on 10/16/11

    Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web


    October 13, 2011, 4:15 pm

    Occupy Wall Street’s ‘Political Disobedience’

    By BERNARD E. HARCOURT

    The Stone

    The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

    Tags:

    economics, Occupy Wall Street, Philosophy, Politics

    Our language has not yet caught up with the political phenomenon that is emerging in Zuccotti Park and spreading across the nation, though it is clear that a political paradigm shift is taking place before our very eyes. It’s time to begin to name and in naming, to better understand this moment. So let me propose some words: “political disobedience.”

    Occupy Wall Street is best understood, I would suggest, as a new form of what could be called “political disobedience,” as opposed to civil disobedience, that fundamentally rejects the political and ideological landscape that we inherited from the Cold War.

    With the Cold War decades behind us, a new paradigm of political resistance has emerged.

    Civil disobedience accepted the legitimacy of political institutions, but resisted the moral authority of resulting laws. Political disobedience, by contrast, resists the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-War period.

    Occupy Wall Street, which identifies itself as a “leaderless resistance movement with people of many … political persuasions,” is politically disobedient precisely in refusing to articulate policy demands or to embrace old ideologies. Those who incessantly want to impose demands on the movement may show good will and generosity, but fail to understand that the resistance movement is precisely about disobeying that kind of political maneuver. Similarly, those who want to push an ideology onto these new forms of political disobedience, like Slavoj Zizek or Raymond Lotta, are missing the point of the resistance.

    When Zizek complained last August, writing about the European protesters in the London Review of Books, that we’ve entered a “post-ideological era” where “opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst,” he failed to understand that these movements are precisely about resisting the old ideologies. It’s not that they couldn’t articulate them; it’s that they are actively resisting them — they are being politically disobedient.

    And when Zizek now declares at Zuccotti Park “that our basic message is ‘We are allowed to think about alternatives’ . . . What social organization can replace capitalism?” ― again, he is missing a central axis of this new form of political resistance.

    One way to understand the emerging disobedience is to see it as a refusal to engage these sorts of worn-out ideologies rooted in the Cold War. The key point here is that the Cold War’s ideological divide — with the Chicago Boys at one end and the Maoists at the other — merely served as a weapon in this country for the financial and political elite: the ploy, in the United States, was to demonize the chimera of a controlled economy (that of the former Soviet Union or China, for example) in order to prop up the illusion of a free market and to legitimize the fantasy of less regulation — of what was euphemistically called “deregulation.” By reinvigorating the myth of free markets, the financial and political architects of our economy over the past three plus decades — both Republicans and Democrats — were able to disguise massive redistribution toward the richest by claiming they were simply “deregulating” when all along they were actually reregulating to the benefit of their largest campaign donors.

    This ideological fog blinded the American people to the pervasive regulatory mechanisms that are necessary to organize a colossal late-modern economy and that necessarily distribute wealth throughout society — and in this country, that quietly redistributed massive amounts of wealth to the richest 1 percent. Many of the voices at Occupy Wall Street accuse political ideology on both sides, on the side of free markets but also on the side of big government, for serving the few at the expense of the other 99 percent — for paving the way to an entrenched permissive regulatory system that “privatizes gains and socializes losses.”

    A protest march through the financial district of New York on October 12.Lucas Jackson/ReutersA protest march through the financial district of New York on October 12.

    The central point, of course, is that it takes both a big government and the illusion of free markets to achieve such massive redistribution. If you take a look at the tattered posters at Zuccotti Park, you’ll see that many are intensely anti-government and just as many stridently oppose big government.

    Occupy Wall Street is surely right in holding the old ideologies to account. The truth is, as I’ve argued in a book, “The Illusion of Free Markets,” and recently in Harper’s magazine, there never have been and never will be free markets. All markets are man-made, constructed, regulated and administered by often-complex mechanisms that necessarily distribute wealth — that inevitably distribute wealth — in large and small ways. Tax incentives for domestic oil production and lower capital gains rates are obvious illustrations. But there are all kinds of more minute rules and regulations surrounding our wheat pits, stock markets and economic exchanges that have significant wealth effects: limits on retail buyers flipping shares after an I.P.O., rulings allowing exchanges to cut communication to non-member dealers, fixed prices in extended after-hour trading, even the advent of options markets. The mere existence of a privately chartered organization like the Chicago Board of Trade, which required the state of Illinois to criminalize and forcibly shut down competing bucket shops, has huge redistributional wealth effects on farmers and consumers — and, of course, bankers, brokers and dealers.

    The semantic games — the talk of deregulation rather than reregulation — would have been entertaining had it not been for their devastating effects. As the sociologist Douglas Massey minutely documents in “Categorically Unequal,” after decades of improvement, the income gap between the richest and poorest in this country has dramatically widened since the 1970s, resulting in what social scientists now refer to as U-curve of increasing inequality. Recent reports from the Census Bureau confirm this, with new evidence last month that “the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.” Today, 27 percent of African-Americans and 26 percent of Hispanics in this country — more than 1 in 4 — live in poverty; and 1 in 9 African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated.

    It’s these outcomes that have pushed so many in New York City and across the nation to this new form of political disobedience. It’s a new type of resistance to politics tout court — to making policy demands, to playing the political games, to partisan politics, to old-fashioned ideology. It bears a similarity to what Michel Foucault referred to as “critique:” resistance to being governed “in this manner,” or what he dubbed “voluntary insubordination” or, better yet, as a word play on the famous expression of Etienne de la Boétie, “voluntary unservitude.”

    If this concept of “political disobedience” is accurate and resonates, then Occupy Wall Street will continue to resist making a handful of policy demands because it would have little effect on the constant regulations that redistribute wealth to the top. The movement will also continue to resist Cold War ideologies from Friedrich Hayek to Maoism — as well as their pale imitations and sequels, from the Chicago School 2.0 to Alain Badiou and Zizek’s attempt to shoehorn all political resistance into a “communist hypothesis.”

    Related
    More From The Stone

    Read previous contributions to this series.

    On this account, the fundamental choice is no longer the ideological one we were indoctrinated to believe — between free markets and controlled economies — but rather a continuous choice between kinds of regulation and how they distribute wealth in society. There is, in the end, no “realistic alternative,” nor any “utopian project” that can avoid the pervasive regulatory mechanisms that are necessary to organize a complex late-modern economy — and that’s the point. The vast and distributive regulatory framework will neither disappear with deregulation, nor with the withering of a socialist state. What is required is constant vigilance of all the micro and macro rules that permeate our markets, our contracts, our tax codes, our banking regulations, our property laws — in sum, all the ordinary, often mundane, but frequently invisible forms of laws and regulations that are required to organize and maintain a colossal economy in the 21st-century and that constantly distribute wealth and resources.

    In the end, if the concept of “political disobedience” accurately captures this new political paradigm, then the resistance movement needs to occupy Zuccotti Park because levels of social inequality and the number of children in poverty are intolerable. Or, to put it another way, the movement needs to resist partisan politics and worn-out ideologies because the outcomes have become simply unacceptable. The Volcker rule, debt relief for working Americans, a tax on the wealthy — those might help, but they represent no more than a few drops in the bucket of regulations that distribute and redistribute wealth and resources in this country every minute of every day. Ultimately, what matters to the politically disobedient is the kind of society we live in, not a handful of policy demands.


    Bernard E. Harcourt

    Bernard E. Harcourt is chair of the political science department and professor of law at The University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently “The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order.”

    First Collective Statement of Occupy Wall Street

    via www.sodahead.com on 10/16/11

    First Collective Statement of Occupy Wall Street October 6, 2011 For all the talk from the various corporate media sources expressing puzzlement at exactl

    occupy wall street - Google Search

    via www.google.com on 10/16/11

    The Brains Behind 'Occupy Wall Street' - Forbes

    via www.forbes.com on 10/16/11

    Meet the second most evilest man in the world (after George Soros).

    This isn’t the 60s. And it isn’t the pre-Iraq War protests either. Occupy Wall Street, supposedly, is different. It has no leader. It has no political action committee behind it. One can argue that the protests against Wall Street this month really started in Tunisia. That’s where the idea came from. But the guys who took that Arab movement and ran with it are based in Vancouver.

    Kalle Lasn, 69, is their quasi leader. He’s the publisher and editor of Adbusters magazine. It’s a small, non-influential critical and artsy magazine with a decent following of around 90,000 who call themselves “culture jammers”. Occupy Wall Street began in the conference rooms at that Vancouver mag.

    I spoke with Lasn in July, right after the new edition of Adbusters hit the news stands with the now famous image of a ballerina balancing on the Wall Street bull. Above her head read the Twitter hashtag #OccupyWallStreet. Lasn didn’t know what this movement would become. Just two and a half short months later, it’s the talk on The Talk, The View and every major news channel.

    I spoke with him again this afternoon about this weekend’s European wide protest, the G-20 and a worldwide Robin Hood tax.

    Kenneth R: The Washington Post calls you the leader of Occupy Wall Street. What do you make of that?

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