The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers.
The investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”
A spokesperson for the Office of Human Rights told Fox News they had received a 60-page complaint against the private university. The investigation, they said, could take as long a six months.
The complaint was filed by John Banzhaf, an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School. Banzhaf has been involved in previous litigation against the school involving the same-sex residence halls. He also alleged in his complaint involving Muslim students that women at the university were being discriminated against. You can read more on those allegations by clicking here.
Banzhaf said some Muslim students were particularly offended because they had to meditate in the school’s chapels “and at the cathedral that looms over the entire campus – the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult somewhere on the campus for the university to set aside a small room where Muslims can pray without having to stare up and be looked down upon by a cross of Jesus,” he told Fox News.
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Banzhaf said that it is technically not illegal for Catholic University to refuse to provide rooms devoid of religious icons.
“It may not be illegal, but it suggests they are acting improperly and probably with malice,” he said. “They do have to pray five times a day, they have to look around for empty classrooms and to be sitting there trying to do Muslim prayers with a big cross looking down or a picture of Jesus or a picture of the Pope is not very conductive to their religion.”
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Garvey {the University President}, in his 2010 interview with NPR, addressed that issue.
“It’s just not something that we view as an activity that we want to sponsor because we’re a Catholic institution rather than Muslim,” he said.
Patrick Reilly, the president of the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization that promotes Catholic identity among Catholic schools, seemed stunned by the complaint.
“I don’t know what the attorney wants them to do – if he wants them to actually move the Basilica or if the Muslim students can find someplace where they don’t have to look at it,” he told Fox News.
Catholic University, he said, is a Catholic institution.
“One wouldn’t expect a Jewish institution to be responsible for providing liturgical opportunities for other faiths and I wouldn’t expect a Catholic institution to do that,” he said.
“This attorney is really turning civil rights on its head,” he said. “He’s using the law for his own discrimination against the Catholic institution and essentially saying Catholic University cannot operate according to Catholic principles.”
Read coverage from Catholic University’s student newspaper by clicking here.
Via Memeorandum."Did a corporation end slavery, or did the government end slavery?!?!"
That's the sort of question investment guru and radio show host Peter Schiff fielded as he debated Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters last week in New York's Zuccotti Park.
Schiff is no ordinary observer. As the prinicipal of the financial firm Euro Pacific Capital, he's a full-fledged and unapologetic member of "the 1 Percent." As an outspoken radio show host (listen online here) and commentator, he not only predicted the housing crash and financial crisis, he railed bank and auto-sector bailouts as they were happening. Schiff believes that capitalism offers is the only hope for young, frustrated people to have a vibrant and prosperous future (get information on his latest book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, here). So he went to Occupy Wall Street to engage and debate the protesters.
Touring the Occupy Wall Street scene in New York with a sign that read "I Am the 1%, Let's Talk," Schiff spent more than three hours on the scene, explaining the difference between cronyism and capitalism, bailouts and balance sheets, and more.
"The regulation we want is the market," said Schiff. "That's what works."
"Everything worries me in this environment. Nobody’s gotten elected with these kinds of numbers. So, I’m worried in the general election. I profoundly admit that. Again, Romney’s just making a technocratic kind of confidence argument, and he’s really kind of a windsock of a guy. If you don’t like his position on something, give it a day he’ll change it."
To some extent, underscoring concern helps gin up the Democratic base and crystallizes the fact that there will be a nominee fairly soon, after months of a slow-moving race.
Carville, in addition to panning Mitt Romney, broadly trashed Rick Perry, and said that Herman Cain "is not going to be the president of anything. Herman Cain goes out and he got a 999, and it’s 909, and he’s like changing area codes. The guy can’t even figure out what his position on abortion yet, which is kind of a basic issue. He gleefully professes ignorance on foreign policy. Again, I’m not, but if I were a person, if I had a conservative world view and I was looking for our next election to have somebody to articulate that view, I would be unbelievably disappointed. Herman Cain is a salesman. I mean, he’s not trying in one sense. He’s just trying to get some attention. He’s not going to get the nomination."
RUSH - So nothing to worry about here, folks, only gonna be for a few months. Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord's Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord's Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord's Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That's what the lingo means, "to help regional forces remove from the battlefield," meaning capture or kill.
Lord's Resistance Army objectives. I have them here. "To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people." Now, again Lord's Resistance Army is who Obama sent troops to help nations wipe out. The objectives of the Lord's Resistance Army, what they're trying to accomplish with their military action in these countries is the following: "To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology." Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting, or who are being fought and we are joining in the effort to remove them from the battlefield. {Read It All}
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| Most members of Congress dodged Obama during his last visit to North Carolina. | AP Photo |
POLITICO - Despite President Barack Obama’s sagging poll ratings, top Democratic leaders from around the country insist they’d love for him to visit. From state party chairmen to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the message remains remarkably consistent: No one views the president as a political liability.
Roughly a year out from the 2012 presidential election, that may be true. But already, as Obama’s most recent forays into battleground states indicate, there are growing signs that many Democratic politicians don’t want to get too close to him either.
In trips to Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — all states that he carried in 2008 — members of Congress were notably missing from the president’s side. Though none came out and said they were deliberately avoiding him, they didn’t have to: Dodging a presidential candidate who’s riding low in the polls is a time-honored political practice.
For Obama, who’s led a charmed political life since bursting onto the national stage in 2004 — he was in high demand on the campaign trail even before he won his Senate seat that year — it’s a harbinger of a humbling election year to come.
In North Carolina, only Sen. Kay Hagan, who isn’t up for reelection until 2014, and veteran Rep. Mel Watt, who represents a majority black seat, appeared with the president. The state’s other six Democratic House members took a pass, offering a variety of excuses.
“[Obama] may end up being Walter Mondale of 1984,” said Raleigh-based Democratic strategist Brad Crone, recalling how the only elected official who risked being seen with the party’s nominee that year was the longtime agriculture commissioner.
In Pennsylvania, where Obama visited Pittsburgh two weeks,the story was much the same — no members of Congress to be found. Though two of southwestern Pennsylvania’s three Democratic congressmen greeted the president on the airport tarmac, neither of them attended any of the public events Obama held, choosing instead to return to Washington. {Read More}
Libya's interim leader outlined more radical plans to introduce Islamic law than expected as he declared the official liberation of the country.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source".
But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways - it was also the basis of Egypt's largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.
Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi's era that he said was in conflict with Sharia - that banning polygamy.
In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya's economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. "Interest creates disease and hatred among people," he said.
Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslim countries, have pioneered the development of Sharia-compliant banks which charge fees rather than interest for loans but they normally run alongside western-style banks.
The Daily Caller - Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran told The Daily Caller on Thursday evening that President Obama should “refinance every home mortgage” without congressional approval in order to “reset the economy.”
“Absolutely, I think [Obama] should do that but there are not a lot of places where he can act unilaterally,” Moran told TheDC during Conservation International’s Oct. 20 dinner in Washington, D.C.
“If he chooses to act unilaterally,” Moran said, “the likelihood is that there will be language in the appropriations bills that will prohibit him from spending money for that purpose. That’s just the political reality. But notwithstanding that, I think he should do everything he can do on his own to stimulate jobs.”
Obama has already asked his Council on Jobs to identify areas of the American Jobs Act that can be implemented without congressional authorization.
Moran told TheDC that he would “like to see” the Obama administration “refinance every home mortgage at three-and-a-half to four percent” interest, which he said can be accomplished without approval from Congress.
“The banks aren’t doing it, but the federal government can borrow money at three-and-a-half percent today. They should use that money to refinance every home mortgage, and that would put $750 billion into homeowners pockets,” he said. “It would reset the economy, and I think it’s the one thing that would most quickly get this economy back on its feet.”
Moran said that the plan “doesn’t cost any federal money. The people who are opposed to it are the Wall Street investment banks, the ones that we bailed out for hundreds of billions of dollars,” he added. “The federal government could do that because most of these loans are now owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told TheDC this month that Obama could “get away” with creating jobs without authorization from Congress.
“I’m sure that the president and other presidents before him, Republican and Democrats, have tried to exceed their constitutional authority,” McCain said, ”but we will do everything we can to try to stop it but I’m not saying he can’t get away with something.”
This hyper-partisanship has damaged our country in ways too numerous to count. Let me elaborate. Hyper-partisanship translates into hyper polarization. It colors how we relate to one another. It turns neighbors and normal decent folk into the “other,” the enemy, those hateful liberals or those despised conservatives. It is a function of “identity” politics whose aim is to divide persons with common economic interests into warring factions. Divide and conquer. And a great many of us, liberals and conservative alike, buy into this bullshit and later pay a heavy price.
Hyper-partisanship colors how we think. It gives rise to ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING, where a party, a group, a person are either all black or all white with no shades of gray. Very few people in life are either all good (saints) or all evil (devils); yet hyper-partisanship demands that you think this way.
No matter what a person may achieve, the game of politics commands you to ignore the accomplishments and focus on the flaws; or spin good deeds into failures or characterize all deeds as evil deeds, despite evidence to the contrary. Demonize your opponent, that is the way the game is played.
Suddenly, one of our readers says: “Hey, wait a minute! I’m pissed off at something but I don’t know why.” It is this hyper-partisan programming pulling, tugging, sucking you under until you gasp for air. Time to break the cycle.
We are living in an era of non-stop character assassination and defamation, of political hostage taking, and legislative gridlock at a time when millions of people are suffering. There are powerful corporate interests that want us to be this way – divided – so they can cash in their chips and turn into serfs. Unless we break this cycle and say “To hell with you, I am not buying this bullshit anymore, then they win, and our country will wither away as dry wind-blown leaves of Autumn.
Sorry folks! Either we get our act together, or we will have no future at all.
All of us guilty of allowing ourselves to get sucked into the vortex of hyper-partisanship, and I admit to being as rabid as any … especially when baited by “libtard” epithets or facsimiles thereof. Sometimes I run hot or cold trying to end the cycle of mutual recrimination.
Case in point: Almost two years ago (October 26, 2009), I posted this article: DEMOGRAPHIC CLUSTERING AND THE SELF-SEGREGATION OF AMERICA, which touched on some these points. The comment thread is even more revealing than the post (and you will recognize the names of our conservative friends). Here is a quote from the article:
“Over time, according to Bishop, a preference for living with like-minded neighbors in extreme homogeneous communities incubates ever more extremist views. Voters in landslide districts tend to elect more extreme members to Congress while moderate candidates shun public office. Among highly polarized lawmakers, debates degenerate into shouting matches as legislators engage in obstruction and gridlock. That is how our most urgent and pressing issues go unresolved.”
When I look at the current political situation, it seems the article was prescient: We are now more polarized and gridlocked than ever before, and the current slate of candidates are even more extreme to the point of caricature.
Recalling some of RN’s recent comments, he distrusts the corporate plutocracy as much as we do – for the same reasons – and you would think we would have common cause; yet, identity politics and old habits always get in the way – witness the hyper-sensitivity that always accompanies hyper-partisanship.
I am wonder if it would be worthwhile revisiting this subject again and see where it takes us.
Newton, Ia. – Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul toured a wind-turbine blade manufacturer here and outlined his views on limited government to about 25 employees Friday afternoon.
Paul, a Texas congressman with strongly libertarian leanings, argued that good-intentioned efforts by the federal government to provide food, shelter and medical care have left Americans dependent and unproductive.
“It’s well-intended,” Paul said of government social programs, “but the truth is that you have to produce in order to live better. The tragedy in our country is that we’ve changed the conditions such that it’s very hard for us to be a productive country.”
The solution, he said, is to return the state to a far more limited role that merely ensures an environment in which the free market can thrive.
Reducing federal spending is also critical, he said. To accomplish a $1 trillion cut to annual spending, Paul said he would draw down U.S. military involvements in other nations and slash defense spending. Troops now stationed in Germany, South Korea and elsewhere should be brought home and put to work in their own communities, he said.
“It has to quit,” he said of military spending. “That’s why I take a bold stand. I’d cut the spending. I’d cut the overseas. I’d cut a lot of this militarism overseas.”
Beyond that, Paul said, the United States must undertake fundamental changes in its economic and monetary systems.
“Unless we look at this as a big picture looking at currency reform, tax reform, regulatory reform in order to restore confidence in the economy, we’re going to continue to get poorer,” he said.
The message was politely received by the plant employees, many of whom came off the factory floor still wearing their safety glasses to hear him speak.
Employee Douglas Barcus, of Newton, said he didn’t entirely share Paul’s views, but appreciated his libertarian perspective and the simple fact that he was different from the typical Republicans and Democrats on the national stage.
“I know he’s been in politics a long time, but he does seem like an outsider,” Barcus said. ”He’s outside the beltway, you know? The mentality of Washington D.C. and all the politics, whether Democrat or Republican, they’re just all the same. I don’t see much of a difference anymore.”
Responding to a question about this week’s Republican debate, which was notable for the contentiousness displayed by candidates, Paul was frank about his distaste.
“I can tell you that after the first 45 minutes I was tempted to walk off that stage,” Paul said. “I thought it was disgusting.”
The number of debates and their tenor indicate a demand for theatricality in politics, Paul said, that perhaps indicates a lack of seriousness about the process.
“These TV shows where they beat up on each other, I think that’s what the people like,” he said. “They enjoy this. They think it’s a game they’re playing.”
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The extreme funk that settled over the country during the summer has eased slightly, but Americans remain gloomy about the economy and more than half say President Barack Obama does not inspire confidence about a recovery.
A sizable majority - more than 7 in 10 - believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and, in a new high, 43 percent describe the nation's economy as "very poor," according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Among those surveyed, less than 40 percent say Obama's proposed remedies for high unemployment would increase jobs significantly.
The pessimism is not a good sign for the nation's recovery hopes and presents a more urgent challenge for Obama as he mounts his re-election bid.
About 4 in 10 think unemployment will rise in the coming year; just 23 percent expect it to decrease. And few expect the government to be able to help. Only 41 percent say the government can do much to create jobs, and less than 40 percent say the main elements of Obama's jobs proposal would increase employment significantly.
What's more, expectations for the coming year have not improved, with 41 percent believing the economy will remain the same, 27 percent saying it will get worse and 30 percent saying it will improve.
Obama's plan to create jobs by increasing spending on public works projects such as schools, roads and bridges finds only 37 percent of respondents believing it will create a significant number of jobs. Tax credits to companies that hire those who have unemployed for six months or more elicits a similar response.
Only 27 percent of the respondents said a Republican proposal that reduces regulations on businesses would create a significant number of jobs; 45 percent say it would create few or no jobs.
The poll, however, found substantial support - 62 percent - for a proposal by Senate Democrats to pay for Obama's jobs proposal with a surtax on incomes over $1 million. One quarter of the respondents opposed the idea and 10 percent said they were neutral. Though the surtax has little or no chance of passing, the poll results underscore the view of Democrats that the proposal has political appeal.{Read Full Article}
WSJ - North Korea’s state news agency weighed in on the Occupy Wall Street protests Thursday, highlighting the “stern judgment” of “millions of people” against a capitalist system that “brings exploitation, oppression, unemployment and poverty to the popular masses.”
The Korean Central News Agency’s daily dispatches usually contain a few accounts of the woes of the rest of the world, so KCNA’s editors were probably rubbing their hands with glee at the chance to play up the Occupy movement, which the report says is “sweeping across the capitalist world.”
With no apparent sense of irony, KCNA says that in capitalist society “1% of privileged class is granted all preferential treatment while 99% of working masses are forced into poverty and death.”
Predictably, the report focuses on the woes of the U.S. in particular, reeling off a list of stats about declining incomes, increasing homelessness and unemployment.
“Low-income earners’ pent-up wrath against avaricious big banks and companies that caused economic inequality finally gave its vent,” the report says.
In the final few paragraphs, the report appears to start channeling Karl Marx in predicting the decline and ultimate fall of the “exploiting class” under the weight of “the socio-class contradiction of capitalism.”
“The end of capitalism is one of inevitabilities of history,” it signs off.
It remains to be seen if the backing of Pyongyang will give the Occupy Wall Street movement fresh momentum.
Daily Intel - All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective.
As the protest has grown, some of the occupiers have spontaneously taken charge on projects large and small. But many of the people in Zuccotti Park aren't taking direction well, leading to a tense Thursday of political disagreements, the occasional shouting match, and at least one fistfight.
It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle. The ten-hour groove marathons weren’t sitting well with the neighborhood’s community board, the ironically situated High School of Economics and Finance that sits on the corner of Zuccotti Park, or many of the sleep-deprived protesters.
“[The high school] couldn’t teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out," said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.
But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.
“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”
To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”
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Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for fucking kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.”
Other organizers were more blunt. “If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.” Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children." The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”
“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”
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In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant."
From today’s battles, it’s not yet clear who will win the day: the organizers or the organized. But the month-long protest has clearly grown and evolved to a point where a truly leaderless movement will risk eviction — or, worse, insurrection.
Marx was quoted as saying, "I am not a Marxist". Even during his life he was appalled at some of the interpretation of his work.
In the Communist Manifesto there is a famous line (which much like the second amendment, is almost always half ignored) that goes something like this. "The first job of the proletariat is to raise itself to the position of ruling class i.e. **to win the battle for democracy **"
It is always important to put things in the historical context when they were written, and no less so with the works of supposedly "timeless" great thinkers. Marx lived in a time when feudal monarchies were a significant barrier to economic growth (Marx would have phrased it something like an impediment to the release of the tremendous potential inherent in social forms of production, of which capitalism was the first (and necessary) form). In a real democracy, workers would be a majority, hence the "ruling class".
I don’t have any specific references at hand for this point, but (IMO) it is
essential to realize that Marx was about production, not distribution of goods. He had nothing but contempt for his socialist contemporaries who focused on (re)distribution of economic output. The point was to understand the fundamental forces behind economic production and to take the steps necessary to unleash the potential inherent in social forms of production (as opposed to e.g. feudal guilds).
As an economist, he was a classical economist who admired Adam Smith. Basically, he thought capitalism was a revolutionary, positive development in human economic society that was nevertheless not without its problems. Those problems were pretty obvious at the time (look no farther than the writings of Charles Dickens for examples). The inherent "contradiction" in capitalism he identified is playing out (again). Capitalists are driven to extract value out of the system. But capitalism relies on mass consumption and if the people producing the goods can't afford to buy the things they produce, well ... you end up with a lot of folks struggling to make ends meet who start to get pretty pissed and raise a ruckus.
That's what the Great Society was really all about--saving capitalism. Even as staid a capitalist as Henry Ford understood this innately , though I suspect he would have been appalled at the suggestion that by producing cars efficiently and cheaply and paying his workers enough that they could afford to buy them he was validating a basic tenet of Marx's economic theory.
But I've found it is pointless to try and have this sort of discussion. Bring up Marx and all you will get is mindless rhetoric about totalitarianism, class warfare (as though there were no such thing as classes of society with competing interests and politics were not the process of reconciling those interests, hopefully without breaking out the guns), etc.
WSJ - It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States. Barack Obama doesn't seem to care for individuals, elaborates Mr. Zuckerman, though the president enjoys addressing millions of them on television.
The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Mr. Zuckerman wrote in these pages two months ago that the entire business community was "pleading for some kind of adult supervision" in Washington and "desperate for strong leadership." Writing soon after the historic downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt by Standard & Poor's, he wrote, "I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country."
His words struck a chord. When I visit Mr. Zuckerman this week in his midtown Manhattan office, he reports that three people approached him at dinner the previous evening to discuss his August op-ed. Among business executives who supported Barack Obama in 2008, he says, "there is enormously widespread anxiety over the political leadership of the country." Mr. Zuckerman reports that among Democrats, "The sense is that the policies of this government have failed. . . . What they say about [Mr. Obama] when he's not in the room, so to speak, is astonishing."
We are sitting on the 18th floor of a skyscraper the day after protesters have marched on the homes of other Manhattan billionaires. It may seem odd that most of the targeted rich people had nothing to do with creating the financial crisis. But as Mr. Zuckerman ponders the Occupy Wall Street movement, he concludes that "the door to it was opened by the Obama administration, going after the 'millionaires and billionaires' as if everybody is a millionaire and a billionaire and they didn't earn it. . . . To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country."
This doesn't mean that Mr. Zuckerman opposes the protesters or questions their motives. When pressed, he concedes that the crowd in Lower Manhattan may include some full-time radicals, but he argues that the protesters are people with a legitimate grievance, as the country suffers high unemployment and stagnant middle-class incomes.
It is a subject he has obviously studied at length, and he explains how the real unemployment rate is actually well above the official level of 9.1%, which only measures people who have applied for a job within the previous four weeks. In fact, he says, unemployment has even surged beyond the Department of Labor's "U-6" number of 16.5% that has received increasing attention lately because it includes people who have given up looking for work within the past year, plus people who have been cut back from full-time employees to part-timers.
Mr. Zuckerman says that when you also consider the labor-force participation rate and the so-called "birth-death series" that measures business starts and failures, the real U.S. unemployment rate is now 20%. His voice rising with equal parts anger and sadness, he exclaims, "That's not America!" {Read More}
I think this pretty much sums up the real agenda of the Occupy movement. If this is Krugman’s Army, then this is their reveille. They aren’t gaining anything for themselves from these ridiculous protests, so they might as well defecate on the country the rest of us love.
Many racialists are unsure about, and even against, these Occupy Wall Street protests all around the country. It has been pointed out to me that many protesters are non-white and/or “communists.” Well my answer to that is: “WHO CARES?!” They are against the same evil, corrupted, degenerate capitalist elitists that WE are against! Instead of screaming, “6 million more!” The pro-white movementites should be JOINING this Occupy movement and supporting it!
Seriously people, just WHO is our enemy? The unemployed left-wing 25-year-old holding up a sign, OR the judeo-capitalist banksters who swindled the American taxpayers out of A TRILLION dollars in the “bailout” scam AND continue to oppress the White Working Class?!? Even Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP had to vote with open communists on some issues to achieve their goals. WE need to utilize and support every movement of dissent against this evil American empire, regardless of which end of the political spectrum it originates from.
The foremost authority on National Socialism in America has this to say about “Occupy” [ANP leader Rocky Suhayda — ed.] :
What is really MISSING — is the “MOVEMENT” from these popular protests — its time to pull WN heads out of their collective ass’s, and JOIN IN the attack on Judeo-Capitalism. What do you suggest? That WN Working Class White people DEFEND the Judeo-Capitalists? IF the “movement” wasn’t so PATHETIC it would be OUT THERE — LEADING these protests! The fact that its these “lefties” as you call them, who are picking up the ball and running with it — only shows how much more in tune THEY are with the fed up masses of White Workers, than the fossilized, reactionary “right-wing”. WHO holds the WEALTH and POWER in this country — the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO is therefore the #1 ENEMY who makes all this filth happen — the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO therefore do WN need to FIGHT? My heart is right there with these people, perhaps someday the “movement” will SHOW the same COURAGE and DEDICATION that these people OUT THERE FIGHTING are SHOWING!
Sincerely, ROCKY SUHAYDA Hail Victory! 88!
The New Republic How should liberals feel about Occupy Wall Street? If you follow politics and you think of yourself as a liberal, then you have undoubtedly been grappling with that question in recent weeks. At first blush, it would be difficult not to cheer the protesters who have descended on lower Manhattan—and are massing in other cities across the United States—because they have chosen a deserving target...
But, to draw on the old cliché, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Just because liberals are frustrated with Wall Street does not mean that we should automatically find common cause with a group of people who are protesting Wall Street. Indeed, one of the first obligations of liberalism is skepticism—of governments, of arguments, and of movements. And so it is important to look at what Occupy Wall Street actually believes and then to ask two, related questions: Is their rhetoric liberal, or at least a close cousin of liberalism? And is this movement helpful to the achievement of liberal aims?
This task is made especially difficult by the fact that there is no single leader who is speaking for the crowds, no book of demands that has been put forward by the movement. Like all such gatherings, it undoubtedly includes a broad range of views. But the volume of interviews, speeches, and online declarations associated with the protests does make it possible to arrive at some broad generalizations about what Occupy Wall Street stands for. And these, in turn, suggest a few reasons for liberals to be nervous about the movement.
One of the core differences between liberals and radicals is that liberals are capitalists. They believe in a capitalism that is democratically regulated—that seeks to level an unfair economic playing field so that all citizens have the freedom to make what they want of their lives (emphasis mine). But these are not the principles we are hearing from the protesters. Instead, we are hearing calls for the upending of capitalism entirely. American capitalism may be flawed, but it is not, as Slavoj Zizek implied in a speech to the protesters, the equivalent of Chinese suppression. “[In] 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel,” Zizek declared. “This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here, we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.” This is not a statement of liberal values; moreover, it is a statement that should be deeply offensive to liberals, who do not in any way seek the end of capitalism.
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And it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street to our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become something of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide area—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.
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In the face of the current challenge from Tea Party conservatism, it is more important than ever that liberals make a compelling case for our vision of America. But we will not make this case stronger by allying with a movement that is out of sync with our values. And so, on the question of how liberals should feel about Occupy Wall Street, count us as deeply skeptical. {Full Article}
