First ‘official’ statement from the Occupy Wall Street movement Occupy Wall Street Word Virus October 3, 2011 This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group. This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com Declaration of the Occupation of New York City As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not
having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.* To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard! *These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Blaming Wall Street Is Wrong Anthony Wile The Daily Bell Monday, October 3, 2011 The Blame Wall Street meme is back. A popular movement called Occupy Wall Street is attracting attention by protesting in and around the US financial district. In this editorial, I want to examine what the protest means in a larger context.The impulse of the demonstration is surely correct insofar as it goes. Today’s monetary system is likely creating a kind of globalist society verging on feudalism. But are the fingers pointing in the right direction? I’m not so sure. We’ve written about this in the past, here: Goldman-Sachs the Anti-Christ? Rolling Stone and Taibbi’s Dilemma In fact, we’ve been waiting for this subdominant social theme to make progress for some four years now since the economic meltdown of early 2008. People are very angry, and it’s handy to blame stockbrokers and bankers for what’s gone wrong. It’s not entirely right, of course. Wall Street, or much of it, provides an essentially transactional function. It wouldn’t exist as it does without the larger economic system of the Western world driven by central banking. There are very large centers of money power in Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs; and Goldman Sachs is certainly an integral and purposeful part of the modern corporatist system. But even much of what Goldman Sachs does is essentially transactional. It’s fundamentally a business, an intermediary, and its employees are paid (a lot, admittedly) to perform certain functions. The real control, I’d argue, lies elsewhere. To get at the root of the problem, one should be protesting, say, in London’s City where central banking originated. Or protesting in front of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC. These are real seats of power. But the shadowy and excessively powerful and wealthy individuals who have
created the modern economic system are quite satisfied no doubt to have Wall Street take the blame. It suits their purposes. In fact, the handful of powerful Anglosphere families that control central banking have done everything they can to focus the blame on the financial industry (the evil intermediary part) since 2008. The record is plain to see. Just Google “banks” and “regulation” and you’ll get an idea of how pervasive the attack on the securities industry and commercial banking has been. It started right after the economic crisis took hold and it continues even now. America’s regulatory system has been restructured and so has Britain’s and Europe’s. And the reforms have given government more power than ever (and thus provided more leverage to the central-banking families that have a hold over Western governments). Everything that was wrong with the current system has been reinforced. The results of this restructuring have been ever-more massive centralization of power by federal governments and unelected bureaucrats. The increased regulation perversely will only benefit the powers-that-be who thrive on regulatory capture. Regulation ALWAYS benefits the largest players at the expense of the smaller. What we call the Internet Reformation – the era of the Internet – has provided a good deal more information on the way the world works. It’s helped people understand why government doesn’t work and why regulations are generally pernicious and usually encourage the very trends they are supposed to prevent.But education only goes so far; and it’s an ongoing process. In response, the Anglosphere power elite that we write about regularly has fought back. It’s been trying to crank up the “blame Wall Street” theme for several years now. Finally, it’s catching on. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Wall Street came in for a great deal of criticism and then was comprehensively regulated. Fast forward to 2011. Things are worse than ever. The centralization is worse, the corruption is worse – and the economic system (call it “capitalism“) doesn’t work any better than in the 1930s. Regulation doesn’t work at all. Regulating Wall Street doesn’t work. Using the Leviathan (federal government) to tame the abuses of the securities industry only makes things worse. Giving unelected bureaucrats power over banks and the securities industry centralizes the corruption and guarantees more of the same in bigger amounts. Unfortunately, Occupy Wall Street has taken a (predictably) anti-free market turn. It’s apparently being hijacked by the modern Left, and the rhetoric of individuals involved increasingly mimics the socialist heyday of the early 20th Century. On purpose, they are creating a straw man. Free markets don’t really exist these days. Today’s corporatist capitalism, fighting for life within the ambit of regulatory democracy, has little to do with vibrant entrepreneurialism or even allowing people a chance to control the monetary and fiscal levers that dominate their lives.
Recently, the BBC made more news than they expected interviewing trader Alessio Rastani who said he “dreamed” of a stock market crash and a depression because he would make a great deal of money. The interview caused a sensation because it seemed to confirm what people thought about “money men” generally, who were happy to thrive on other people’s misery and pain. Boy, did he feed the meme! And just yesterday, the United Steelworkers (USW) put out a press release supporting Occupy Wall Street’s activities and goals. “The United Steelworkers (USW) union stands in solidarity with and strongly supports Occupy Wall Street,” it begins. Here’s some more: The brave men and women, many of them young people without jobs, who have been demonstrating around-the-clock for nearly two weeks in New York City are speaking out for the many in our world. We are fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long. Our union has been standing up and fighting these captains of finance who promote Wall Street over Main Street. We know firsthand the devastation caused by a global economy where workers, their families, the environment and our futures are sacrificed so that a privileged few can make more money on everyone’s labor but their own. Wall Street and its counterparts on Bay Street (Toronto), The City (London) and across the world tanked our economy in 2008. They caused a crisis that we’re still suffering from – record job losses, home foreclosures, cuts to schools, public services, police, fire and so much more. They’ve gambled with our pension funds and our futures for far too long … It’s time to hold those who caused our economic crisis accountable, to ensure they don’t get away with it again, and to demand that everyone pay their fair share … The USW is proud to join with the brothers and sisters of the Occupy Wall Street movement as we continue this important fight for a more just economy and a brighter tomorrow. Notice the rhetoric. “Workers … are sacrificed so that a privileged few can make more money on everyone’s labor but their own.” This is a purely Marxist formulation. The problem, as has been amply analyzed by the alternative press, begins with central banking and the current practice of producing fiat money – printing money from nothing – which creates first booms and then devastating busts. Austrian economics is quite clear on this point and its descriptions correspond to reality, unlike those of Keynesian finance. The press release blames Wall Street, Bay Street and The City for the financial crisis, but it’s obvious that the USW is pointing the finger at those individuals who are involved in the transactional business of high finance, not those who run central banks or control the modern monetary system. According to Wikipedia, the aim of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations is to begin “to draw attention to Wall Street’s apparent misdeeds and call for structural economic reforms” especially as regards “wealth disparity.”
If this is really the goal of Occupy Wall Street, then its organizers should move at least some of their protests to Washington DC and to the mile square City of London, for these areas contain the central banking mechanisms that cause the real damage. It is too bad that the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be obscuring the larger issues by apparently blaming the private (transactional) sector in entirety for what has occurred in the past few years. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this seems to be the case. And if it is, then the demonstrations are a step back rather than forward.
MESSAGE FROM KYNIZE: END THE FEDERAL RESERVE THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF OUR FINANCIAL SITUATION IN THIS COUNTRY THROUGH THEIR CORRUPT DEBT BASED MONEY SYSTEM THEY CONTROL SOCIETY AND OUR POLITICIANS THAT’S WHY EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS SO UPSIDE DOWN AND SCREWED UP THEY FUND THE WARS THEY FUND POVERTY THE FEDERAL RESERVE WANTS YOU DEPENDENT ON THIS DEBT BASED THIEVERY THAT’S HOW THEY CONTROL THE POPULATION END THE FEDERAL RESERVE AND FIX THIS PROBLEM WE NEED GOLD BACKED MONEY AGAIN WE NEED CONGRESS TO FOLLOW THE U.S. CONSTITUTION VOTE RON PAUL IN 2012 HE WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS
RON PAUL 2012 EQUALS END THE FED listen at infowars.com http://prisonplanet.tv/index.php http://www.infowars.com/
END THE FED END THE FED END THE FED
‘Occupy Wall Street’ Tax Proposal Is Backed By Wall Street Itself The “Buffett tax rule” being promoted by Occupy Wall Street protesters is exactly what the Wall Street-owned Obama administration wants Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planetcom Monday, October 3, 2011 There’s no better way of deciding an outcome than owning both sides of the debate. That’s why the Wall Street-owned Obama administration must be licking its lips at the fact that ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters have been conned into advocating new tax policies backed by billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates that will do nothing to touch Wall Street, but everything to sink what’s left of the American middle class. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are campaigning for the Obama administration to “Pass the Buffett Rule on fair taxation, so the rich pay their fair share.” This demand is 1. posted on their own website. The campaigners are demanding that the US Congress pass a bill backed by the Obama administration, which is comprised of Wall Street operatives and is a creature of Wall Street. Do you see the dichotomy here? The protesters are pushing for a new tax rule which is supported by the Wall Street-owned Obama administration, therefore the demonstrators are unwittingly doing the bidding of Wall Street itself. The “Buffett tax rule” will do virtually nothing to make the ‘filthy rich pay their share’ – it will only raise taxes for middle class Americans and middle class businesses. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama’s plan aren’t millionaires, and 99.99% aren’t billionaires.” It is the middle class – not Warren Buffett or Wall Street corporations – who will be most hurt by the very policies the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ crowd are calling for. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway still owes taxes from 10 years ago. Buffet is the ultimate Wall Street insider – he is the third wealthiest person on the planet. Buffet avoids billions in taxes because most of his interests are based offshore. Indeed, most top corporations pay virtually no income tax, not because of any law that isn’t in place, but because they have parked most of their
wealth in offshore tax havens. Buffett, aided by the Occupy Wall Street protesters who amplify his message, is volunteering the middle class, not himself, for a tax increase, that’s why the Wall Street-owned Obama administration is fully on board with the idea. 1. “No differences exist between the Obama administration and billionaire investor Warren Buffett on the principles of a White House tax proposal that bears his name, Jay Carney, President Barack Obama’s spokesman,” told Bloomberg. The Buffett tax plan is also being backed by multi-billionaire Microsoft honcho Bill Gates, who like Buffett advocates a proposal that would hit the middle class with tax hikes while his own company avoids paying billions in taxes through its offshore subsidiaries. The protesters are also demanding the passage of the Tobin Tax, which is a tax on all financial transactions. Again, this will simply be passed on to consumers by large corporations, it will not touch Wall Street. The Tobin Tax will only hurt the poor and middle class and will do nothing to reign in the multinationals. Bearing all this in mind is it any wonder that MoveOn.org, the Democratic front organization that aggressively lobbied in support of the Obama campaign in 2008 and went on to become a primary advocate for his administration’s policies, is now moving to steer the Occupy Wall Street movement? How do we reconcile the fact that an organization which vehemently backed a Wall Street creation, the Obama campaign, which was aided with almost $2 million dollars in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, is now posturing as an advocate for anti-Wall Street protests? None of this is to say that the thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t genuine activists who are trying to be a force for positive change. The problem is that their self-appointed leaders are completely in league with the very Wall Street interests the protesters are supposedly there to oppose. Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for 1. Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.