That both conservatives and reformists have faced defeat characterises Iran‘s domestic politics [AFP] Cambridge, United Kingdom - One way of assessing what the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is capable of is to examine whether its adversaries have a chance of being defeated. OWS has generated a great deal of debate since its inception as a [...]
Ellen Cantarow, An Environmental Occupy Fracks Corporate America Posted by Ellen Cantarow at 5:04pm, January 22, 2012. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: For a recent Foreign Policy in Focus review of my new book The United States of Fear, click here; for a recent interview that David Walsh of the website History News Network [...]
: Occupy Wall Street: Why Now? What’s Next? Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom in Conversation About Occupy Wall Street by Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom Naomi Klein: One of the things that’s most mysterious about this moment is “Why now?” People have been fighting austerity measures and calling out abuses by the banks for a couple of years, with [...]
Rebecca Solnit, Occupy Your Heart Posted by Rebecca Solnit at 9:01am, December 22, 2011. [Holiday Note for TomDispatch Readers: Call it a tradition by now. Rebecca Solnit has had the last word at this website for years, looking forward, looking back, and in 2010, before our year of protest even began, considering “alternatives” to what is. This [...]
Celebration: Protesters returned to the park en masse shortly before midnight in downtown Manhattan.The Occupy Wall Street movement made a surprise invasion of Zuccotti Park last night while the police focused on New Year‘s Eve celebrations elsewhere in New York. Around 800 demonstators piled up metal barricades, hoisting American flags and banners while scuffles broke [...]
How the People Got Their Groove Back: What a Bunch of Farmers Can Teach a Bunch of Occupiers About How to Keep on Going By Ashley Sanders http://warisacrime.org/content/how-people-got-their-groove-back-what-bunch-farmers-can-teach-bunch-occupiers-about-how-keep Not so long ago, Americans witnessed the beginning of a mass democratic uprising. Thousands of average people, [...]
Voices From the Occupy Movement Across the country, the Occupy Movement is developing new forms of exposing the 1% Go to story | Go to homepage America Beyond Capitalism Gar Alperovitz describes a model that challenges private monopoly ownership without a powerful bureaucratic state Go to story | Go to homepage Don’t Roll Over, Take Over Paul Jay: we [...]
Time Magazine paying homage to the global protester of 2011 as the person of the year is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is an unexpected honor for occupiers in this country to be singled out for attention this Holiday Season — without the use of pepper spray to highlight their importance, [...]
Rebecca Solnit, Occupy Your Heart Posted by Rebecca Solnit at 9:01am, December 22, 2011. [Holiday Note for TomDispatch Readers: Call it a tradition by now. Rebecca Solnit has had the last word at this website for years, looking forward, looking back, and in 2010, before our year of protest even began, considering “alternatives” to what is. This year, [...]
Picture- Occupy LSX The document was given to protesters at their “Bank of Ideas” base on Sun Street – a former site of financial corporation UBS. City police have stepped up an effort to quell the movement since they occupied the building on 18 November, with the document stating: “It is likely that [...]
Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51 By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/set-your-doomsday-clock-1151 The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and [...]
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu called called the Occupy movement a ‘voice for the world.’ Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters Archbishop Desmond Tutu has waded into an ecclesiastical row over aNew York church’s refusal to allow protesters from Occupy Wall Street to camp on a vacant lot it owns. The South African activist and retired church leader urged Trinity Church to [...]
byGene Healy Columnist postedDecember 6, 2011 at4:16am with120 Comments President Barack Obama walks from the podium after talking about extending payroll tax cuts, Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, in the White House briefing room in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) If our fashion-conscious president still finds the time to read the lad-mags, December’s GQ had to hurt. Obama made [...]
Occupy London activists are angered at a police document that lists them with terrorist organisations. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP Police have angered Occupy London activists after listing the movement among terrorist groups in an advisory notice sent to the business community in the City. The document issued by City of London police, headed “Terrorism/extremism update for the City of London business community”, [...]
Neither Revolution Nor Reform: A New Strategy for the Left By Gar Alperovitz FOR over a century, liberals and radicals have seen the possibility of change in capitalist systems from one of two perspectives: the reform tradition assumes that corporate institutions remain central to the system but believes that regulatory policies can contain, modify, and control corporations [...]
Peter Van Buren, Thought Crime in Washington Posted by Peter Van Buren at 9:01pm, November 27, 2011. When I arrived at Zuccotti Prison one afternoon last week, the “park” was in its now-usual lockdown mode. No more tents. No library. No kitchen. No medical area. Just about 30 leftover protesters and perhaps 100 of New York’s finest [...]
How does the Occupy Wall Street movement move from “the outrage phase” to the “hope phase,” and imagine a new economic model? In a Democracy Now! special broadcast, we bring you excerpts from a recent event that examined this question and much [...]
YouTube / liarpoliticians A rich banker who appears to have learned none of the lessons of 20th-century economic history. A newscaster who snickers at an impassioned argument. And a reporter dismissed as a young girl who will one day learn better. This exchange between a former Goldman Sachs partner, a BBC correspondent and British journalist Laurie Penny, [...]
A demonstrator from Occupy Wall Street is arrested in lower Manhattan on November 17th. Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson. PRE-OCCUPIED The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street. by Mattathias SchwartzNOVEMBER 28, 2011 PRINT E-MAIL RELATED LINKS News Desk: A map of possible sites for the original Occupy Wall Street encampment. Ask the Author: Join a live [...]
Brennan Cavanaugh (CC-BY) A scene from one of Occupy Wall Street’s N17 rallies on Nov. 17 in New York City. The writing on the wall reads: “This revolution will not be privatized.” OWS Organizer Questions Intentions of Secretive Affinity Group EMAIL PRINT SHARE SHARE Posted on Nov 22, 2011 By Alexander Kelly NEW YORK CITY—At six o’clock on [...]
Rebecca Solnit, Ms. Civil Society v. Mr. Unaccountable Posted by Rebecca Solnit at 8:32am, November 22, 2011. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: TomDispatch now closes for Thanksgiving. We’ll be back next week, of course. In the meantime, those of you who would like to offer support to this site can still contribute $75 and get [...]
Photo Credit: Newsweek Caught on Camera: 10 Shockingly Violent Police Assaults on Occupy Protesters Probably 97 percent of police act professionally toward protesters. But the other 3 percent are armed and dangerous, and know that they’re unlikely to be held accountable. November 18, 2011 | Occupations across the country have born the brunt of some [...]
Occupy protesters erected a ‘bat signal’ in New York that projected ’99%’ instead of the familiar bat [GALLO/GETTY] New York, NY – We live in an age of Superbowls and Super Committees with millions hoping that some new superheroes will turn up to save us from a downward spiral of intractable problems. A week ago, [...]
Obama has remained silent during a new crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Egypt [GALLO/GETTY] President Obama, where are you? Are you not watching the same images that the world is watching of the massacres in Tahrir? Are you too busy preparing for Thanksgiving to take a minute to make a strong statement about what’s [...]
Half of Russians say that their life is ‘difficult but possible to endure’, according to a recent poll [EPA] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – A spectre is haunting the globe – the spectre of the indignant. From New York to Hama, London to Tripoli, Madrid to Athens, a zone of revolt has descended. The year 2011 will [...]
YouTube /OperationLeakS The Pepper Shot Heard ’Round the Web EMAIL PRINT SHARE SHARE Posted on Nov 19, 2011 In what could turn out to be a recruiting coup for the Occupy movement, a clip showing a UC Davis campus police officer blithely pepper-spraying a group of seated students is stirring outrage from all corners [...]
Andy Kroll, Occupy Wall Street‘s Political Victory in Ohio Posted by Andy Kroll at 5:50pm, November 20, 2011. Twelve hours after Mayor Bloomberg’s cops evicted the Occupy Wall Street encampment from Zuccotti Park, the space had been scrubbed down and repopulated with police and private-security types, up to 150 of them. In essence, since [...]
Members of Occupy movement celebrate the “reopening” of the UBS building as a discussion venue. Photograph: Demotix Occupy UK converges on London City offices of UBS bank reopened as forum for discussion by Occupy protesters arriving from across Britain reddit this Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 November 2011 20.28 GMT Article history The Occupy movement continued to [...]
People are waiting for the opportunity to express their outrage. By Eric Walberg – Cairo As protesters fed up with the increasing injustices of the global economic system get chucked out of their latter-day Hoovervilles, Euro-American elites might consider when their turn will come. For the financial crisis facing Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and who-knows-where [...]
I’m Thankful for Occupy By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/im-thankful-occupy I’m thankful that a growing number of us reject the idea of a mysterious being to which we should be thankful, and for the concomitant growing assumption of responsibility for our own fate. I’m thankful that there are so many people doing so many things for [...]
War Is a Force That Pays the 1 Percent: Occupying American Foreign Policy Monday 14 November 2011 by: J.A. Myerson, Truthout | News Analysis The man on the left served with the Marines in Southern Afghanistan from 2001-2006. The man on the right is now a public school teacher who served with the [...]
Very recently I had the opportunity to speak, regrettably briefly, with a woman who is lending her support to the Occupy movement in Seattle. Every little bit helps when you are facing the forces of rampant and incorrigible authoritarianism. From my own experience in the 60s it first becomes very obvious thatthe [...]
Two police cars were set ablaze in Tottenham following a protest over the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots In this extract from their eBook, published on Friday, psychologistsStephen Reicher and Clifford Stott argue that riots are caused not by immorality [...]
UBS building under occupation by Occupy London today. Photograph: Peter Walker for the Guardian Occupy London takes over empty UBS bank – live Protesters escalate demonstration with ‘public repossession’ a day after ignoring Corporation of London’s demand for them to leave St Paul’s reddit this Comments (665) This page will update automatically every minute: On | Off [...]
. New York Police Department officers stand guard at the entrance to the protesters‘ base in Zuccotti Park [Reuters] Dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters have been arrested as they attempted to march onto the New York stock exchange to mark two months since the movement against corporate greed began. New York City police arrested the protesters on [...]
AP / Julia Xanthos New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, seen here in 2008. By Robert Scheer The Villain Occupy Wall Street Has Been Waiting For EMAIL PRINT SHARE SHARE Posted on Nov 17, 2011 If you assume that the real substance to the occupy movement is not the raqe at greed or the disaffection with the politicians [...]
Although the Occupy protests have gone global, it is still a local, grassroots movement [GALLO/GETTY] Something is unravelling in America. The dream, the purpose and the drive are worn and tired. The people are under siege. Occupy Wall Street is organic; it’s homegrown and native. The voluntary, viral and near-spontaneous movement began as a reaction [...]
Protesters plan a day of action two days after a surprise eviction from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images Occupy protesters prepare for day of ‘solidarity’ across US Series of events planned to support evicted Zuccotti Park activists by highlighting growing inequality and need for jobs reddit this Paul Harris in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 [...]
. In Italy, some communities manage public spaces that were expected to be privatised [GALLO/GETTY] On November 14, while Silvio Berlusconi was heading to the Quirinale to resign amidst a crowd chanting “buffoon, thief”, a thousand people were quietly sitting in a former cinema listening to a public reading of David Foster Wallace‘s last book. When the [...]
An eviction notice hangs on a tent outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Occupy London: eviction notices attached to tents outside St Paul’s Notices from City of London Corporation tell activists to move by 6pm on Thursday or face legal action Note the use of the law of the rulers to stop [...]
Occupy Wall Street protesters were removed from Zucotti Park in Manhattan, but later returned to their base of two months. Photograph: Craig Ruttle/AP Occupy Wall Street protesters return to Manhattan park despite ruling New York mayor wins legal battle to have them removed, but activists make Zuccotti Park their base again reddit this Karen McVeigh. Paul [...]
Nuclear Pots Call Iranian Kettle Black by Eric Margolis Recently by Eric Margolis: Goodbye Greece Here we go again. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long awaited, much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear activities has been thunderously greeted in North America as conclusive evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. [...]
AP / Seth Wenig Occupy Wall Street protesters rally in a small park on Canal Street in New York on Tuesday. By Chris Hedges Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal [...]
Another Week, Another Obama War on Africa By davidswanson - Posted on 14 November 2011 From Wired The Pentagon’s shadow war in Africa could have a new front, if reports coming out of Nigeria are accurate. U.S. troops are headed to Nigeria to help local forces do battle with Boko Haram, an Islamic terror group that has killed up [...]
Fewer than 200 people were sent to prison during the McCarthy era for their political beliefs [GALLO/GETTY] Several Fridays ago, I attended an excellent panel discussion on Occupy Wall Street sponsored by Jacobin Magazine. It featured Doug Henwood and Jodi Dean – representing a more state-centered, socialist-style left – andMalcolm Harris and Natasha Lennard, representing a more anarchist-inflected left. [...]
Obama used to refer to longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak as a ‘friend’ of the US – and not as a dictator [EPA] During the past few months, Barack Obama has come under increasing pressure from his would-be Republican opponents, not for secretly subscribing to the faith of the enemy (Obama Muslim-baiting is so 2010), [...]
AP / Damian Dovarganes California Attorney General Kamala Harris. By Robert Scheer There is no three-strikes law for crooked bankers, not even a law for a fifth strike, as The New York Times reported in the case of Citigroup, cited last month in a $1 billion fraud case. Unlike the California third-striker I once wrote about [...]
‘ Opinion polls show many Americans think that the economic system is rigged in favour of the richest [GALLO/GETTY] SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – The bursting to life of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the most hopeful development in American politics since Barack Obama was elected president three years ago this month. Obama’s election has [...]
Obama Doctrine: Making Virtue of Necessity By James Petras After nearly 3 years in deep pursuit of the colonial wars initiated by ex-President Bush, the Obama regime has finally recognized the catastrophic domestic and foreign consequences. As a result the “reality principle” has taken hold; the maintenance of the US Empire requires modification [...]
Photo Credit: edenpictures on Flickr LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email. When It Comes to the Environment, Are We the 99 Percent or the 1 Percent? Protestors of the Keystone Pipeline, fracking and other environmental concerns are [...]
