I was asked what I think of all this Occupy Wall Street (OWS) peaceful protest, unexplainable violence aimed at the protesters, provocateurs placed into some of the protest groups to discredit them, and its importance now.
In my opinion, the most notable thing about this situation is that a lot of people are very unhappy:
- The reported unemployment rate has been 9.x% for several years now, which translates to an actual unemployment rate closer to 17%
- The last two years huge amounts of money have been given to certain extremely monied corporations so that they would create jobs. Instead what has happened is that the unemployment situation has remained basically unchanged and these corporations have been raking in record profits
- These same corporations have been increasing the rate of usury on home mortgages until several millions of home owners have defaulted and been evicted from their homes, even thought the rate these corporations pay the Treasury Department is around 0.1% (one tenth of a percent)
- These same corporations are now seeking deficiency judgments against these same former homeowners to recover the difference between the bargain price for which the banks sold their homes and the amount of the mortgages, then preparing to package these deficiency judgments in the same way they packaged the sub-prime mortgages, and sell them on the stock market
- Extreme misconduct is starting to be uncovered in the actions of these corporations, for example the falsification of mortgage documents by BofA by cutting and pasting the name and address from an unfavorable property assessment onto the body of a much more favorable assessment to make the mortgage look better, and huge numbers of foreclosure proceedings have been temporarily halted because the banks do not even have the legal proof required to foreclose, for example the mortgage papers, and eventually some judge somewhere bothered to actually check: they were totally bluffing and they got caught.
You can’t have that kind of scenario year after year without people becoming unhappy. And if we can’t get much of a Magna Carta out of the assortment of middle class citizens who have been standing over a month now in this Occupy Wall Street protest, at the very least we can comprehend 1. they are all very unhappy.
I think that is actually enough. It takes a very special kind of person to sacrifice enough to leave house and home and camp in a city park for a month, occasionally being threatened with arrest or beatings. Think about it: what is the chance that you would stop what you are doing and go join such a protest: one in a thousand? One in a million? There are thousands of people throughout the United States right now actively doing exactly that. For every one of them who actually went, there are 1,000 or 1,000,000 more people who feel that way but who did not go, BUT they will go to the polls to vote in two weeks. At least 6,000,000 families have been made homeless by banks foreclosing on mortgages in the last few years — families who still legally OWN the homes from which they were evicted because these foreclosures have now been found to be illegal. See this legal article http://www.amvona.com/blog/economics/28217-houston-weve-got-a-problem-bevilacqua.html.
“On Oct. 18th, 2011 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down their decision in the FRANCIS J. BEVILACQUA, THIRD vs. PABLO RODRIGUEZ – and in a moment, essentially made foreclosure sales in the commonwealth over the last five years wholly void.”
“In essence, the ruling upheld that those who had purchased foreclosure properties that had been illegally foreclosed upon (which is virtually all foreclosure sales in the last five years), did not in fact have title to those properties. Given the fact that more than two-thirds of all real estate transactions in the last five years have also been foreclosed properties, this creates a small problem.”
Concerning the treatment of the OWS demonstrators, some history and Political Science comes immediately to mind:
“Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found, and from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy.”
“Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed.”
“Therefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to the people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above everything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may easily do if he takes them under his protection.”
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/123
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm (html)
The government reaction to the common uprising of the people, first the Tea Party which was successfully sidetracked by Republican Party infiltration, and now Occupy Wall Street which has resisted similar infiltration by the Democratic Party, is the exact opposite of what is necessary for incumbents in our government to remain in power. The consistent historical outcome from not accommodating the people is complete replacement of all government components who have aligned themselves with the abusive ultra-riche.
Any of the Riche who immediately, publicly, and actively work to protect the OWS participants will encounter temporary attacks by the fools opposing this popular uprising, but ultimately they will stand a very good chance of filling the power vacancies which will result. The fewer riche who stand with the populists now, the higher these ‘Nobles’ will likely figure in the revised government.
A conquering Emperor would typically send in a noble he disliked with orders to commit genocide, then execute the noble later as a mass murderer to satisfy the people: thus he is at once rid of a troublesome group of populists who would resist him and of a noble he dislikes, and the people allow him to rule as he removed someone they see as having committed atrocities against them: in their eyes the Emperor becomes their advocate and they accept him.
The only rationale I can see in the apparently government ordered abuses by municipal police and the media blackout is that the present administration wishes an occasion to eliminate some people it has found inconvenient. When they have followed their orders sufficiently, then the POTUS can order an investigation, have them arrested, tired, and sentenced, thus making himself to appear a proponent of the people and possibly preventing his own demise coincident with that of the ‘Banksters’ that he has long supported.
NOTE 18 OCT 2011: Now the Law Enforcement managers who were the only ones we observed perpetrating illegal attacks on the OWS protesters, are being investigated for their misdeeds. As things unfold we will see who the inconvenient noble(s) is(are) that are to be sacrificed, and possibly we will learn who is the Emperor and the motive behind it all. See Guardian and NY Times articles here and here.
NOTE 25 OCT 2011: Oakland, California police opened fire on unarmed Occupy Oakland demonstrators today with tear gas, “flash bang” hand grenades, and live ammunition with rubber projectiles. http://www.pixiq.com/article/media-shuts-down-cameras-as-oakland-pd-fires-tear-gas One blog entry said that police said this assault was retaliation for rocks being thrown earlier. I have seen no previous account suggesting rocks being thrown, but perhaps it went unreported. Scattered blog entries suggest some citizens are now recommending the protesters arm themselves and use deadly force when necessary for self defense. There is significant public sentiment that unwarranted violence should be immediately corrected by retaliatory violence. For example, see here.
Oakland’s Mayor posted this statement explaining the situation on her FaceBook.com wall:
Statement from Mayor Jean Quan about today’s enforcement action
Many Oaklanders support the goals of the national Occupy Wall Street movement. We maintained daily communication with the protesters in Oakland.
However, over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the City could maintain safe or sanitary conditions, or control the ongoing vandalism. Frank Ogawa Plaza will continue to be open as a free speech area from 6 am to 10 pm.
We want to thank the police, fire, public works and other employees who worked over the last week to peacefully close the encampment. We also thank the majority of the protestors who peacefully complied with city officials.
I commend Chief Jordan for a generally peaceful resolution to a situation that deteriorated and concerned our community. His leadership was critical in the successful execution of this operation. City Administrator Deanna Santana developed the plan and secured mutual aid from other departments and the State of California. She will direct departmental teams, including safety, public works, communications, to restore conditions at the Plaza so that it is available for public use.
The City welcomes all Oaklanders to continue to use the Plaza during daylight hours for peaceful protest.
I do not understand why the Occupy Whatever demonstrators are unable to leave an area for the evening and return in the morning. I also do not understand why police would use deadly force to drive demonstrators from a public area, regardless of a desire to close the park. Are there no fire hydrants? Is it truly necessary to cause permanent injuries with grenades and live ammo? I realize they were rubber bullets and flash bangs, but they can cause people to loose their hearing or vision, and one citizen was obviously hit in the head which could have killed him. A fire hose would clear the area better without so much risk of injury or death.
This trend to pit police against citizen is most disturbing: both from inflexible people who will not honor a request to leave at night and from professionals who used inappropriate levels of force against citizens. The citizens should have been protected by the police, not shot by them. This is not Communist China.
NOTE 26 OCT 2011: Reports were of rubber bullets fired on demonstrators, HOWEVER photos show octopi were fired. These are not the same thing.
NOTE 01 NOV 2011: A police Supervisor is said to have admitted that he and other officers are driving homless and criminals to stay in the park with the OWS protestors in an effort to discredit the movement and drive the demonstrators out. He also said that they routinely plant cocaine on demonstrators to facilitate a quick arrest. http://globalgrind.com/news/fuk-police-nypd-always-going-fight-dirty-details : there are related links on the NYPD corruption in the article.
In explosive new allegations, the NYPD have been urging drunks and criminals to infiltrate the protestors’ camp at Occupy Wall Street in an effort to sully the cause.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement moves into its sixth week of demonstrations, a new Op-Ed piece by the New York Daily News’ Harry Siegel is shedding light on what role the NYPD plays in dividing the movement.
In the last couple of weeks, the occupiers in Zuccotti Park have divided into two sects. On the east side of the park are the true dedicated protestors, while the west side of the park is filled with the everyday stragglers, free loaders and drug dealers who stumble into the area every night under the encouragement of the NYPD.
Siegel reports that when he talked to drunks at other parks they told him they were instructed by NYPD officers to “Take it to Zuccotti.”
We should probably expect the same thing in other port cities where shipping is important, and probably a ‘revelation’ that many of the police are actually mafia crime family operatives. Chicago, Los Angeles, wherever.
NOTE 01 NOV 2011 B: There is a fix for the criminal problem: simply video and publish the criminal activities: post profusely. Get their faces and their customer’s faces in the videos. Video and post any threats against OWS people doing the recording. Publish publish publish! And the drug pushers will look for a more peaceful, inconspicuous, location to do their criminal activities. Same with homeless defecating on the street — publish it big time and demand police arrest them.
NOTE 11 NOV 2011: John Wayne once said “Life is hard. Harder if you’re stupid.” If government uses violence against a protest such as this they totally loose the support of the public. Shooting demonstrators was a terrible mistake. Harming an unarmed, non-violent veteran so badly that he will never speak again while being video recorded was even worse. now even neighboring law enforcement agencies are reluctant to send help to Oakland (for various reasons). The only way they could have done it worse would have been to execute some demonstrators. What were they thinking? Most likely, they weren’t thinking, they were reacting.
http://www.baycitizen.org/occupy-movement/story/occupy-oakland-police/ “Television cameras captured officers firing what appeared to be flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets into the crowd. Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen suffered a fractured skull during the clashes. The incident, which is still under investigation, drew worldwide scrutiny of the Oakland Police Department’s tactics.
That has made other departments think twice about sending police to Oakland.
“We’re not authorizing people to do that kind of stuff. Not in our name,” said Maxwell Anderson, a Berkeley City Council member, during a Tuesday night City Council meeting about the mutual aid agreement.”