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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Occupy Wall Street explained by MoveOn.org -- a powerful piece of propaganda for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.
Occupy Wall Street explained by MoveOn.org -- a powerful piece of propaganda for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. http://front.moveon.org/this%
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4 comments:
From an email I received:
Dear Friends, I’ve had mail opened by the CIA, an IRS audit conducted by an FBI agent, “students” in seminars who did not appear on the university books, and in an earlier life, rather personal attention from MI-5 (or was it 6? Or a NATO network of a different kind?) My adventures with the Stasi (barred from the late unlamented German Democratic Republic from 1986 until the fall of the Wall) seem minor by comparison……so I do take Don Riegle’s warning seriously. However, I beg to point out that our society secretes psychopathologies continuously and profusely, so the appearance in protest movements of characters disturbed or unsalubrious should not surprise us. After all, there are not mental health clinics on every corner, and if there were, into what culture would they be releasing the ostensibly cured? With anticipatory Thanksgivi9ng greetings to all Norman Birnbaum
To all. Don't for one minute fail to consider the very real possibility that the wide open OWS gatherings are being hit with paid double agents - whose purpose is to act outrageous - to type-cast the movement - and try to mis-characterize it - marginalize and discredit it.
There are very powerful forces that hate and fear the OWS events/movement - and will spare no effort or cost to falsely discredit it.
As a Congressional opponent of the Vietnam war - I saw, with my own eyes, the deliberate efforts at that time - of the Nixon/war supporters to discredit the anti-war movement.
It was typical of the sinister and unethical tactics of that admin. to slander and destroy its opponents. Need proof in their own words - then listen to the Nixon White Houses tapes.
I remember vividly a large anti-war gathering on the House side of the East Front of the Capitol. It was in every respect a peaceful and proper public demonstration of opposition to the war.
Then at one point a long-haired man with a hippie appearence climbed out on the ledge by the steps and took off all his clothes - standing naked and disgusting in a key location - drawing much attention - and press and TV focus. It created a false characterization of the event - exactly as it was designed to do.
We learned years later the nude "protester" was really an agent of the White House supporters - trying to undercut and slander the absolutely proper and necessary anti-war effort.
The same kinds of slimebags that engineered that designed distortion - are alive and well today - well-funded - and as venal as ever.
Let's not fall for these deliberate mischaracterizations and discrediting attempts.
Who with a brain - can dispute the evident unfairness in todays US economic system - with the vortex of wealth going increasingly to the top 1 percent - and the corresponding damage to the rest of our nation - and the broad national interest.
The dismantling of Glass/S was a huge mistake - engineered by the Repub Congress - and signed into law by Pres Bill Clinton - based upon the self-interested poor advice of Bob Rubin and Larry Summers. An epic error in judgement - that has since helped cause the financial over-leveraging that directly helped tank the financial system. The massive resulting damage to the American people continues to this day.
Paul Volcker is right. Bob Rubin was wrong. Its time we face these ugly facts and realities - and hold those responsible to account.
Of course people are angry and disillusioned - they have a right to be. The top 1 percent need to heed this wake-up call.
We need to concentrate our national policies to serve the broad public interest - the entire 100 percent - not just the top 1 percent.
So the protesters have a right to gather and speak out. We need to hear them - and pay attention to what they are saying - and why they are gathering to say it.
Don Riegle.
More email:
This is a fascinating montage: It would have made Dr. Goebbels proud. The breaching of Glass-Steagall, which arguably means nothing to the mass of the pictured “protesters”, was unquestionably the cause of the ongoing financial meltdown. And the best part of the clip shows that knowledgeable people in Congress predicted correctly what would happen if banking, investment banking, and insurance were commingled.
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> What is conveniently left out of this is the role of the Congressional banking committees, pushed by a rabid Congressional Black Caucus, in implementing the breach and purposely creating the flood tide of bad loans, running it thru the sluice gates of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. Those committees (Think Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and—is it possible--Senator Barack Obama?), and the federal government (including its vaunted regulators), not Wall Street, were responsible for generating the crisis. Wall Street, in the immortal words of George Washington Plunket of Tammany Hall, “seen its chances and took ‘em!”
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> Like all good propaganda, the clip piously implies that Glass-Steagall somehow underlay Occupy Wall Street’s concerns, even though a cursory look at the “occupiers” showed little more than a broad unfocused discontent with money changers as the cutting edge of a raft of personal grievances having little to do with Wall Street. A cursory look also showed more than a little anti-Semitism infusing the organized part of the protest, as the protesters “knew” that that the “Zionist Jews” really controlled all the banks. It is hardly surprising that the Nazi party and the Communist Party USA endorsed Occupy Wall Street. This is the sort of “power lying in the streets” that Lenin picked up and boasted of, and that Hitler manipulated so effectively later on. Kudos to MoveOn.org for winning the Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels Award for 2011 for promoting the Big Lie. JA SHAW
Helena Cobban wrote:
> I am personally offended, but also extremely surprised, that John Shaw would make such outrageous claims about the #occupy movements as he does, based on what he admits is only "a cursory look" at the 'occupiers'.
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> If JS had, as I have, spent time talking to some of those thousands of our fellow citizens who have participated in these protests (and I've even participated a little, myself), he would have found many who know a lot about the whole history of Glass-Steagall and its repeal. (I was writing about Glass-Steagall etc long before September 2008.)
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> Where does JS get off with his elitist assumptions-- ah, but based on that great detecting device "a cursory look"-- about the intellectual capabilities and level of understanding of public policy showed by the #occupy people?
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> And where on earth does he get his evidence about "more than a little anti-Semitism infusing the organized part of the protest"? Oh, that same old "cursory look" again?
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> In the free-flowing, dynamic environment of the #occupy protests, literally thousands of different signs have been hoisted. One was hoisted that read something like "Google: Zionists control Wall Street". That one sign, which was not against Jews, as such, but against Zionists-- most of whom these days are, in America, not Jewish but Evangelical Christians-- got adduced by JS (as it has by many others) as "evidence" that the protests are somehow anti-Semitic. But Zionism and Judaism are different things: one, a religion, the other a very terrestrial political movement.
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> Indeed, Zionism, Judaism, and Israeliness are three quite different phenomena. Yes, many protesters criticize policies of the Government of Israel-- as they do, of our own government. This is not "anti-Semitic", either.
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> Meantime, a glance at the #occupy moment that was more than "cursory" would have shown Mr. Shaw that many Jewish personalities have been among its leaders and organizers; and that at #OccupyWallStreet (and at a number of other #occupy locations) a number of well-attended Jewish religious services were held to mark Sabbaths, the festival of Simchat Torah, etc.
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> There is much we could discuss about the tactics and form of organization of the #occupy movement. But denigrating all the participants as ignoramuses or anti-Semites says more, it seems to me, about the resistance to facts of the denigrator than it does about those denigrated.
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