An Insidious Threat to the Occupy Movement
Obama has overseen the mass destruction of US jobs, all the while protecting the 1%
By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | Counterpunch | October 14, 2011
The threat I am referring to is not that of being pepper-sprayed, arrested, beaten or imprisoned. It is a different type of threat: a stealthy challenger that while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement tends to undermine it from within—more or less like the proverbial elephant in the room. I am referring to the threat of preemption, or cooptation, posed by the Democratic Party and union officials. In light of their unsavory record of undermining the revolutionary energy of social movements, projections of sympathy for the anti-Wall Street protesters by the White House, the Democratic Party officials and union leaders can be viewed only with suspicion.
Expressing sympathy for the protester, President Obama recently stated: “I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” At the same time he also defended the decision to bail out banks and other Wall Street speculators, arguing that the decision was necessitated by the need to salvage our financial system. It is obvious that, as usual, the president is talking from both side of his mouth.
On the same day (October 6th) that the president projected sympathy for the protesters, Vice President Biden also expressed similar sentiments. Comparing the Wall Street protests with the Tea Party, he stated: “The Tea Party started, why? TARP. They thought it was unfair – we were bailing out the big guy.” The vice president’s reference to the Tea Party is by no means fortuitous; there are clear indications the Democrats are trying to utilize the Occupy movement the way the Republicans do the Tea Party. “The mushrooming protests could be the start of a populist movement on the left that counterbalances the surge of the Tea Party on the right, and closes what some Democrats fear is an ‘enthusiasm gap,’” reported the New York Times on Friday, October 7th.
Projections of sympathy for the Occupy movement have not been limited to the White House. Many officials of the Democratic Party have either personally appeared at the Zuccotti Park to express support or sent statements of support for the protesters. Likewise, a number of union leaders joined a large protest rally held in New York City’s Foley Square on October 5th to show sympathy for the protesters.
Then there are the liberal political pundits and media outlets such as the New York Times that are also trying the build bridges between the Democratic Party and the Occupy movement in an effort to channel the protesters’ energy to the party’s electoral machine. For example, the New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote: “And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans. . . . But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies. . . . Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over.”
On the face of it there is nothing wrong with the Democratic Party officials or union leaders expressing support for the protesters. In light of their actual economic policies, however, that support can be characterized only as hypocritical. The Democrats are as much responsible for the economic problems that have triggered the protests as their Republican counterparts. The Obama administration has played an especially destructive role in pursuing a devastating neoliberal austerity agenda in term of bailing out the Wall Street gamblers, extending the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy, expanding the US wars of choice—and then cutting vital social spending to pay for the financial resources thus usurped.
Equally blameworthy are union bureaucrats who have enabled the White House and the Congress in the implementation of such brutal austerity programs. Hollow posturing aside, the AFL-CIO has opposed neither the neoliberal austerity policies at home nor the imperialist wars of aggression abroad. Well-paid union officials have not even seriously challenged factory closures; nor have they earnestly resisted brutal cuts in workers’ wages and benefits.
In projecting sympathy for the Occupy Movement, the Democrats are essentially trying to have their cake and eat it too! Their efforts to express support for the protests can be interpreted only as opportunistic and utilitarian: to identify themselves with the rapidly spreading popular protests against the status quo, to mask the Obama administration’s neoliberal devotion to Wall Street, and to harness the energy of the protesters in order to garner their vote in the 2012 elections.
If successful, this would not be the first time the Democratic Party would have derailed and dissipated social struggles for change; it has a long record of such policies of betrayal, going back all the way to the Populist Movement of the late 19th century. Barack Obama’s promise of change in the 2008 elections in pursuit of garnering the grassroots’ vote was only the latest of the Democrats’ strategy of playing the good cop in order to contain radical energy. Two years earlier they had managed to undermine a vigorous antiwar movement by voicing the protesters’ demands to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if they won the majority seats in the Congress. Having thus gained the control of both houses of the Congress in the mid-term election of 2006, they shamelessly backed away from their promise to antiwar voters.
One can only hope that the Occupy Movement is armed with the knowledge of the Democratic Party’s record of cooptation and betrayal of radical movements; and will therefore chart a political movement of the working people and other grassroots independent of both parties of big business.
~
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.
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Latvia urging UK to ‘prepare for war’ with Russia
By Lucas Leiroz | March 18, 2024
The Baltic countries continue their “preparation for war with Russia.” Now, as if it were not enough to engage in a suicidal militarization campaign, Latvia is also demanding that the main NATO countries, such as the UK, also begin adopting radical measures to prepare for the “inevitable” confrontation with Moscow. The main Latvian criticism of the British concerns the military service, with the Baltic country asking the UK to immediately resume conscription policies to increase the size of its forces.
Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins, stated that all NATO countries should follow the Latvian example when it comes to military preparation. According to him, it is necessary to implement special militarization measures and improve defense capacity in the face of the supposed “Russian threat”, which is why Western countries should unite in a common military policy. Karins believes that not all NATO states are efficiently engaged in this military preparation process. In this regard, he criticizes even the stance of key countries in the bloc, such as the UK.
Karins was asked by a journalist from The Telegraph about whether London should adopt mandatory military service for its citizens. He resolutely responded that Latvia “strongly recommends” such an attitude. According to Karins, Latvia is developing a system called “total defense”, in which all the country’s efforts are directed towards expanding military capacity. Efforts include all sectors of civil society, thus requiring a system of total mobilization within which mandatory military service is vital. … continue
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We’ve been lied to and cheated for too long! Wars built on lies for profit with complete disregard for human life (I believe this is the definition of a psychopath). Banks built on fraudulent fiat currency, selling money they don’t own, taking countries assets as they make slaves of the people and trash the planet (I believe this fits the description of a gangster or, yes, a bankster). This has to stop-around the world! We are all brothers and sisters. Our voices together can unite us all in the common cause of our dignity and our freedom. We are all involved. The opportunity is here right now to make changes in a peaceful manner because violence will only breed violence, and we have an opportunity to make a more meaningful connection between all people around the world. We have a world that’s hurting and we can heal it with our motivation. Right now our ecosystems are being destroyed by the greed of corporations placing money above all else. Above all that we cherish. Like the cells of the body that work together to create our physical form and functions, we, as members of the human race, can work together around the world to create the world that honors ourselves, honors life and honors earth. You can feel this new vibrancy radiating across the lands. In Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Britain and now in the US and Canada. It’s quite exciting! Please be involved. And please, don’t be swayed by the bullshit that they’re going to throw in our face to try to distract us. They’ve been playing this same game for too long. There is an opportunity here and the time is now. And, as with music, timing is everything.
Rob Gordon
RobGordonMusic.com
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I hope the #OWS tels the represents from those partys,democrats and republicans, to go and fu.. them self.
And if they want to be on it, they know the game,and kick their asses if they try to grabb the movment.
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Democrats voted to give Wall Street $trillions, to keep the Patriot Act, to maintain torture as de facto US policy, to give transnational corporations tax breaks for moving US jobs overseas, to repeal Glass-Steagal, to force Americans to buy the toxins of Big Pharma, and to criminalize the growing of one’s own food. They, along with Michael Moore, have no claim to the independent freedom the OWS protesters possess. Both parties serve a bad master.
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Therefore, all decisions in the future must be have solely by all of us, the “99%” can out vote the plutocratic richest 1% except is a rigged process with bogus voting machines, gerrymandered districts, unlimited corporate funding and a dishonest media that aids and abets the criminal elite and their despicable pitchmen and women.
A national Referendum on the aforementioned in this article and by the preceding posters would resolve the matter democratically; where congress will not, the court is has not, and president care not!
At all these rallies, for that is what they are, they can not be seriously appealing for justice from the miscreants that be! Lobbying the power elite is no only a viable option and indecent, for it is supplication at the feet of your enemies!
Let us compose our laments into propositions, have a show of hands, and not work on consensus, for as the term is being used, it is tantamount to demanding an unanimous agreement; allowing a reactionary element from a political party, patrician family, or covert anti-disestablishment clique to nullify the 99%!!!
Limits on income and wealth is critical; as is an equitable redistribution of them. Wars of Aggression must cease immediately, and those who instigated them put under citizens arrest along with the true perpetrators of 9/11 which is an issue the Occupy movement must face, or be as bad as the democrats in complicity, and as such, absent of any real moral authority, for they will have compromised their souls for pragmatic expediency, the original sin in political life and a certain sudden death in the hearts and minds of the best informed and most valuable comrades it could ever have.
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Pingback by WHO IS AFRAID OF THE PROTEST? « THE.CAT | October 14, 2011 |
1) End the FED
2) End all wars
3) End the Federal Income Tax
Its a beginning.
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‘Historically, progressive social movements have been infiltrated, their leaders co-opted and manipulated, through the corporate funding of non-governmental organizations, trade unions and political parties. The ultimate purpose of “funding dissent” is to prevent the protest movement from challenging the legitimacy of the economic elites:
“In a bitter irony, part of the fraudulent financial gains on Wall Street in recent years have been recycled to the elites’ tax exempt foundations and charities. These windfall financial gains have not only been used to buy out politicians, they have also been channelled to NGOs, research institutes, community centres, church groups, environmentalists, alternative media, human rights groups, etc.
The inner objective is to “manufacture dissent” and establish the boundaries of a “politically correct” opposition. In turn, many NGOs are infiltrated by informants often acting on behalf of western intelligence agencies. Moreover, an increasingly large segment of the progressive alternative news media on the internet has become dependent on funding from corporate foundations and charities.
The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic.”
the European “Left” have, in the course of the last thirty years, been transformed and remoulded. The “Free Market” system (Neoliberalism) is the consensus of the “Left”. This applies, among others, to the Socialist Party in France, the Labour Party in Britain, the Social Democrats in Germany, not to mention the Green Party in France and Germany.
In the US…A handful of powerful corporate lobby groups control both the Republicans and the Democrats… the leaders of the AFL-CIO have also been co-opted by the corporate establishment against the grassroots of the US labor movement.
The programs of many NGOs (including those involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement) rely heavily on funding from private foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, Tides foundations, among others.
Historically, the anti-globalization movement which emerged in the 1990s has opposed Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller, Ford et al have, over the years, generously funded progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.
“Colored Revolutions”
In the course of the last decade, “colored revolutions” have emerged in several countries. The “colored revolutions” are US intelligence ops which consist in covertly supporting protest movements with a view to triggering “regime change” under the banner of a pro-democracy movement.
“Colored revolutions” are supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House, among others. The objective of a “colored revolution” is to foment social unrest and use the protest movement to topple the existing government. The ultimate foreign policy goal is to instate a compliant pro-US government (or “puppet regime”).
“The Arab Spring”
In Egypt’s “Arab Spring”, the main civil society organizations including Kifaya (Enough) and The April 6 Youth Movement were not only supported by US based foundations, they also had the endorsement of the US State Department.
Barely two months after the end of the 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia, OTPOR was spearheaded into playing a central role in the installation of a US-NATO sponsored “caretaker” government in Serbia. These developments also paved the way towards the secession of Montenegro from Yugoslavia, the establishment of the US Bondsteel military base and the eventual formation a Mafia State in Kosovo.
“In the summer of 1999, the head of the CIA, George Tenet, set up shop in Sofia, Bulgaria to “educate” the Serb opposition. Last August. 28 [2000], the BBC confirmed that a special 10-day class had been given to the Otpor militants, also in Sofia.
The CIA program is a program in successive phases. Early on, they flatter the Serbs’ patriotism and spirit of independence, acting as if they respect these qualities. But after having sown confusion and broken the unity of the country, the CIA and NATO would go much further.”
“The Revolution Business”
OTPOR’s Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) describes itself as “an International network of trainers and consultants” involved in the “Revolution Business”. Funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), it constitutes a consulting outfit, advising and training US sponsored opposition groups in more than 40 countries.
OTPOR played a key role in Egypt.
Egypt Tahir Square: What appeared to be a spontaneous democratization process was a carefully planned intelligence operation. View video below. [HERE] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXbA6yZY-8
PART II of this article will examine the mainstay of the Occupy Wall Street movement, including the role of NGO organizers.
This article was written by Prof Michel Chossudovsky on the Center for Global Research, the URL of the above article is: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27053
Redacting was made me, I did not know how to contact Aletho News webmaster, and hope offense is not taken, that the full article with photos is published here as a feature article, and followed by with Part II when available.
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