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Occupy Everything

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Published : October 10th, 2011
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 "Recession Officially Over," The New York Times' lead headline declared around 7 o'clock this morning. (Watch: they'll change it.) That was Part A. Part B said, "US Incomes Kept Falling." Welcome to What-The-Fuck Nation. I suppose if you include the cost of things like the number of auto accident victims transported by EMT squads as part of your Gross Domestic Product such contradictions to reality are possible. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, where are you when we really need you?


I dropped in on the Occupy Wall Street crowd down in Zuccotti Park last Thursday. It was like 1968 all over again, except there was no weed wafting on the breeze (another WTF?). The Boomer-owned-and-operated media was complaining about them all week. They were "coddled trust-funders" (an odd accusation made by people whose college enrollment status got them a draft deferment, back when college cost $500 a year). Then there was the persistent nagging over the "lack of an agenda," as if the US Department of Energy, or the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was doing a whole lot better.


This is the funniest part to me: that leaders of a nation incapable of constructing a coherent consensus about reality can accuse its youth of not having a clear program. If the OWS movement stands for anything, it's a dire protest against the country's leaders' lack of a clear program.


For instance, what is Attorney General Eric Holder's program for prosecuting CDO swindles, the MERS racket, the bonus creamings of TBTF bank executives, the siphoning of money from the Federal Reserve to foreign banks, the misconduct at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the willful negligence of the SEC, and countless other villainies? What is Barack Obama's program for restoring the rule of law in American financial affairs? (Generally, the rule of law requires the enforcement of laws, no?)


Language is failing us, of course. When speaking of "recession," one is forced into using the twisted, tweaked, gamed categories of economists whose mission is to make their elected bosses look good in spite of anything reality says. I prefer the term contraction, because a.) that is what is really going on, and b.) the economists haven't got their mendacious mitts around it yet. Contraction means there is not going to be more, only less, and it implies that a reality-based society would make some attempt to acknowledge and manage having less - possibly by doing more.


Instead, our leaders only propose accounting tricks to pretend there is more when really there is less. The banking frauds of the past twenty years were a conspiracy between government and banks to provide the illusion that an economy based on happy motoring, suburban land development, continual war, and entertainment-on-demand could go on indefinitely. The public went along with it following the path of least resistance, allowing themselves to be called "consumers." They also went along with the nonsense out of the Supreme Court that declared corporations to be "persons" with "a right to free speech" where political campaign contributions were concerned - thereby assuring the wholesale purchase of the US government by Wall Street banks.


Praise has been coming in from all quarters for the peacefulness of the OWSers. Don't expect that to last. In the natural course of things, revolutionary actions meet resistance, generate friction, and then heat. Anyway, history is playing one of its little tricks by simultaneously ramping up the OWS movement in the same moment that the banking system is actually imploding, with the fabric showing the most stress right now in Europe. I shudder to imagine what happens when OWS moves into the streets of France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain.


All of the action right now has the weird aura of being an overture to the year 2012, fast approaching as we slouch into the potentially demoralizing holidays of the current year. I don't subscribe to Mayan apocalypse notions, but there's something creepy about the wendings and tendings of our affairs these days. OWS is nature's way of telling us to get our shit together, or else. This means a whole lot more than bogus "jobs" bills and Federal Reserve interest rate legerdemain. It means coming to grips with the limits of complexity and purging the system of the idea that anything is too big to fail. What happens when Occupy Wall Street becomes Occupy Everything, Everywhere?



 

 

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James Howard Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. His nonfiction book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.
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pcanon:

I agree that there is strong Fascist tone to our country and am not in favor of it. Bush was certainly no bargain, but Obama/Pelosi/Reid took it to an entire new level. Who do you favor for the Presidency?

I am very suspicious of the protest organizers:
http://biggovernment.com/thomasryan/2011/10/14/the-email-archive-of-the-occupywallstreet-movement-anarchists-socialists-jihadists-unions-democrats/

Again, although I agree with some of their complaints, their solutions are the wrong approach, proven not to work time and time again.

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In the first place, the obsession of some with the so-called leftist nature of American politics is an indication o ignorance of US history and US policy. America is at core a fascist country. Bush did more to destroy this country than any president on record. Blaming the left for our ills is foolish. What we have in America is socialism for corporations, for the very rich. All this talk about "entitlements" completely overlooks the true thrust of American politics. Our military is and always has been devoted almost entirely to the profits of banks and corporations and now the the greed of the leadership class for global domination. This is fascism, not socialism. Fascism is a large part of our national budget. The bank bailouts - well, that i part of the same agenda. Bailing out and sustaining a certain class is what defines America. That anything goes to the public at all is astonishing and it won't for long, as they are planning to terminate all "entitlements" (social security is not an entitlement - at least get that straight. it might have problems, but it is not an entitlement). That many in the US would prefer to kill our elders than to stop this incessant bailout of the war profiteers, the banks, multi-national corporations, and this vast political corruption (trillions of dollars disappeared from our public coffers) doesn't speak well for the US public. Soon all US monies will be directed to the greater enrichment of the billionaire class. Will any of you fools be complaining about those entitlements then? I doubt it. Where is your sense and your humanity?

This is from the 1930s, a quote from one of America's most distinguished generals, Smedley Butler, on the true purpose of US militarism. Nothing has changed. If anything, we have come to more deeply embrace war-profiteering as somehow essential for our "national defense". We are a nation of morons.

http://co.quaker.org/Writings/SmedleyButler.htm

On War, by U.S General Smedley Butler (1933)

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

[Biographical information on Gen. Smedley Butler and a longer speech]



___________________________________________________

This - the US military budget, the blood of America's sons and daughters - this is an entitlement around which you should be rapping your minds. It is imperialism that will kill us, not feeding our elderly (who spent their working lives paying for a kind of pension system that is I suspect intentionally misused for other purposes). All this lunacy about Obama establishing a socialist state in America is simple-minded drivel from people who know almost nothing about US domestic policy, US foreign policy and US history. Read about Codex Alimentarius, about the many laws written to establish the architecture of a fascist police state in the US (prison camps, etc. targeted for American civilians), read about the swine flu vaccine and the plans (abandoned for now) to forcibly vaccinate the public with bad vaccines on behalf of pharmaceutical manufacturers. This is fascism, not socialism. The super congress is set to dismantle what little we have left of public services in this country. What will you fanatics have to complain about then? Will you still see socialism for the hungry people? Do you see anything at all that is happening here?

This is why Occupy Wall Street exists today. Get a clue folks and stop ranting about so-called socialism. You are owned by fascists. Apparently, that makes you happy.
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Although the protestors raise some good complaints and some that we even agree with, some of their "solutions" are comical:

- Abolish Capitalism, which has raised more people out of poverty than any idea in history
- Raise taxes. Just where do they think the money will come from after they abolish Capitalism? Take a look at Cuba and North Korea for the answers. Would you kill your dog because it had fleas?
- Increase entitlements- ditto
- Increase wages. Requires more profits, productivity
- Increase regulations

It is clear where Kuntstler's sympathies lie. It looks like our political opponents are using this to justify what they want to do anyway, although I doubt that they will really lynch the bankers. But they may kill or jail the more unruly protestors before this is over, if they feel too threatened.

Kuntsler is right that we're in a depression. Check out shadowstats.com and usdebtclock.org for more realistic numbers than the BS we are fed. He is getting closer to his Agenda 21 nirvana. Careful what you wish for, Jimbo.
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If your one of the 99% STFU!
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Not suprisingly Kunstler uses the Occupy Wall Street protesters for his own agenda.

People are angry over the mismanagent of the economy. So why are they not at the White House? Obama has been in office for three years now and has done nothing -- in fact, he has accelerated the spending and the bailouts begun under President Bush.

President Obama, Kunstler, and the Democratic heads have taken the protesters under their wing. Why? Because they have the same agenda: the end of Capitalism. Obama wishes to establish a Socialist state with his party as permanent overlord -- handing out freebies for continual re-election. You must have noticed how Obama and the Demos denigrated the Tea Party protests of last year. You see those protesters focused correctly on the need for less, not more government.

As for Kunstler, he wishes State control so he can shut down industry, shunt individual drivers onto mass transit, and eventually return to his cockamamie 'world made by hand.' By the way, here is a story of thugs on New York's subway system that came out last week:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/06/police-seek-thugs-suspected-of-series-of-robberies-in-lower-manhattan-subways/

As for the protesters themselves - what do they want? More government control as noted: Union jobs, a minimum $20 wage, somebody, anybody to take care of them.

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In the first place, the obsession of some with the so-called leftist nature of American politics is an indication o ignorance of US history and US policy. America is at core a fascist country. Bush did more to destroy this country than any president on  Read more
pcanon - 10/14/2011 at 3:08 PM GMT
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