The gods cooperated with splendid, early autumn weather, as tens of thousands filled New York City's Foley Square before marching to Liberty [Zuccotti] Park where 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters are, as of this writing, in its 20 day.
Labour unions, mainly government and hospital workers, threw their full weight in support of the on going protest which has clear and simple aims of denouncing Wall Street and corporate greed, the heavy hand of the rich who represent one percent of America's wealth, and who shift the burden to the weakening and declining middle classes, the working class, and the poor, for their own 'conspicuous consumption', increase in wealth, and pullers of the strings on the marionettes they have bought in the US Congress.
GuamDiary recommends to its followers to go to 'Democracy Now' which has put together an excellent collage of images and commentary on the march and protest.
The dumb corporate media keeps harping on the unkempt, hippy like gathering, which it isn't, and asking 'what do they want'? They know but really cannot say since their paymasters are corporate America who are fighting any tax burden that they should bear but won't, whilst millions are un or underemployed long time, are downsized and jobs outsourced for the greater glory of corporate America; others are thrown out of homes they were fraudulently should at usurious conditions; still others are in debt for loans for education and outrageous credit card interest fees, so on.
'Occupy Wall Street', non structured as it is -- and hence the naif wonder of the corporate suits who lively in a sterile world of formulae and manners--has touched a raw nerve of America. The young people have gone to Wall Street to denounce not only the greed of finance capitalism but the fact that it was saved by them, the taxpayers, after the big bracket bankers engineered the 2008 global recession. And to pore more salt on the open sores and wounds of the suffering 99 percent who are seeing their quality of life diminishing day by day, the most wanted financial criminals have not been put on trial, convicted, and sent to the slammer for crimes against the American people. No, instead they sit in the courtyards of the temples of power which they buy and control.
It is important to point out 41 years again in the very same Wall Street student protesters went there to denounce the war in Vietnam. Then the construction workers beat them up. Today the workers have joined the 'Occupy Wall Street' protest. And if that isn't a powerful message to the dysfunctional major political parties and Congress and the corporate world that owns so much and refuses to pay its fair share, let them reap the whirl wind!
Thursday, October 6, 2011
US threatens withholding of funds for UNESCO
It won't be the first time the US will put a hold on its funding of UNESCO. Like a petulant, spoilt child, the US stamps its foot because UNESCO is willing to accept as a full member Palestine, if approved by the UN General Assembly, which it will.
UNESCO's decision muddies the waters of the Obama administration's threat to veto the Palestinian Authorities call in the name of the Palestinian people full membership in the UN before the Security Council. The US will once again come to the Israeli occupier of Palestinian lands for the last 44 years by casting its veto.
As GuamDiary keeps saying, Israel is an American domestic hot potato. For the past 63 years, the Zionist state is the devil's tail of American policy.
As conditions rapidly change in the Arab world, the American policy remains hostage to the Israeli lobby and its influence among American Jews and Gentiles. Since any American administration lacks the 'chutzpah' to challenge the influence and domination of a foreign state on its international policy, it will suffer one political defeat after another. Nonetheless, the US has means at its disposition for nastiness in the form of blackmail, corruption, and a rattling of the sabre.
Yet as events in the last two years have shown, the US is losing traction on its influence in the Arab world. It is time for redirection of US Israeli policy. It will come however too late!
UNESCO's decision muddies the waters of the Obama administration's threat to veto the Palestinian Authorities call in the name of the Palestinian people full membership in the UN before the Security Council. The US will once again come to the Israeli occupier of Palestinian lands for the last 44 years by casting its veto.
As GuamDiary keeps saying, Israel is an American domestic hot potato. For the past 63 years, the Zionist state is the devil's tail of American policy.
As conditions rapidly change in the Arab world, the American policy remains hostage to the Israeli lobby and its influence among American Jews and Gentiles. Since any American administration lacks the 'chutzpah' to challenge the influence and domination of a foreign state on its international policy, it will suffer one political defeat after another. Nonetheless, the US has means at its disposition for nastiness in the form of blackmail, corruption, and a rattling of the sabre.
Yet as events in the last two years have shown, the US is losing traction on its influence in the Arab world. It is time for redirection of US Israeli policy. It will come however too late!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
US gets a double whammy slap in UN Security Council
In an outrage of protest, US ambassadrix to the UN Susan Rice denounced the double veto by Russia and China on a resolution condemning Syria.
As it was expected, the crocodile tears of rage flooded her remarks. How could Russia and China ignore the brutality that has been going on in Syria more the last six months, so on?
Well old darling Rice how about the US' threat to veto the Palestinians' application for full membership at the UN? How could the US blithely ignore what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians on the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, and in Gaza for the last 44 years of the Zionist state's brutal occupation?
As it was expected, the crocodile tears of rage flooded her remarks. How could Russia and China ignore the brutality that has been going on in Syria more the last six months, so on?
Well old darling Rice how about the US' threat to veto the Palestinians' application for full membership at the UN? How could the US blithely ignore what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians on the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, and in Gaza for the last 44 years of the Zionist state's brutal occupation?
Monday, October 3, 2011
Main Street media 'disses' 'Occupy Wall Street'
‘Occupy Wall Street’ has its own newspaper, to counter the not so straight coverage of the main street media. It is appropriately named 'The Occupied Wall Street Journal'!
Consider Long Island based 'Newsday' is a good example of how corporate interests distort the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests. 'Rebels without a cause', the tabloid calls it. And yet they do have a cause: they are against the greed of Wall Street big bracket banks and corporate America whose wealth continues to grow at the expense of the 99 percent of the American people who see their livelihood, their lives, and the future of their children cheapened, demeaned, and devalued, all in the name of the one percent who possess great wealth and privilege. In more basic terms, this one percent of the wealthy and the powerful who buy and sell governments and escape the burden of taxes based on their true wealth and holdings, dominate 24 percent of the economy. In other words, their wealth is equal to the savings and the sweat and tears of the growing army of the poor or 140 million households in America. The US has a population of 300 million more or less.
Yes, the rebels do have a cause, and a jolly bloody good cause it is. But you would hardly know it talking to the main street media. Yet, we should not be shocked by the way the media, the ponces who earn fat salaries for talking nonsense. They are in the pay of the giant corporations who own the presses, the radio and television airways, and who buy and sell governments.
'The New York Times' has on its masthead: 'all the news fit to print' from its perspective. Marx, who is held in much disrepute, famously said: 'there is freedom of the press for those who own it!' And yet, the word gets out, the protests against corporate greed and finance capitalism spread across the country. And the media has to catch up with a situation and a process they don't understand [or understand all too well]; for 'Occupy Wall Street' and 'We are the 99 percent', which are more or less synonymous, are breaking the silence of the lambs of the press. And they've hit a nerve that ordinary America can and does understand.
You cannot dismiss the protesters as 'anti capitalist' since like good Americans, they basically believe in liberal economics. Saying this, they do understand that the way 'casino capitalism' as the banks and the corporations play, go against the decency of democracy and the values they were brought up to believe.
In a way, you can say the banks and the corporations are 'anti American' and the protesters, patriots. Try to sell that story to main street media! I dare you.
Consider Long Island based 'Newsday' is a good example of how corporate interests distort the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests. 'Rebels without a cause', the tabloid calls it. And yet they do have a cause: they are against the greed of Wall Street big bracket banks and corporate America whose wealth continues to grow at the expense of the 99 percent of the American people who see their livelihood, their lives, and the future of their children cheapened, demeaned, and devalued, all in the name of the one percent who possess great wealth and privilege. In more basic terms, this one percent of the wealthy and the powerful who buy and sell governments and escape the burden of taxes based on their true wealth and holdings, dominate 24 percent of the economy. In other words, their wealth is equal to the savings and the sweat and tears of the growing army of the poor or 140 million households in America. The US has a population of 300 million more or less.
Yes, the rebels do have a cause, and a jolly bloody good cause it is. But you would hardly know it talking to the main street media. Yet, we should not be shocked by the way the media, the ponces who earn fat salaries for talking nonsense. They are in the pay of the giant corporations who own the presses, the radio and television airways, and who buy and sell governments.
'The New York Times' has on its masthead: 'all the news fit to print' from its perspective. Marx, who is held in much disrepute, famously said: 'there is freedom of the press for those who own it!' And yet, the word gets out, the protests against corporate greed and finance capitalism spread across the country. And the media has to catch up with a situation and a process they don't understand [or understand all too well]; for 'Occupy Wall Street' and 'We are the 99 percent', which are more or less synonymous, are breaking the silence of the lambs of the press. And they've hit a nerve that ordinary America can and does understand.
You cannot dismiss the protesters as 'anti capitalist' since like good Americans, they basically believe in liberal economics. Saying this, they do understand that the way 'casino capitalism' as the banks and the corporations play, go against the decency of democracy and the values they were brought up to believe.
In a way, you can say the banks and the corporations are 'anti American' and the protesters, patriots. Try to sell that story to main street media! I dare you.
JPMorgan Chase pays New York police to protect it from 'Occupy Wall Street'
Jaime Dimon chief pooh bah of JPMorgan Chase is a frontline warrior in not only protecting his bank's interests and holdings but is a defender of the Wall Street mafia that brought US and world free market forces to their knees in 2008.
Feeding large from the public's trough of free cash payouts, he's is battling hard and strong against anyone or any government wishing to put regulatory restraints on 'casino capitalism' which buoyed up big bracket banks and profits and generous bonuses.
He has criticised the conservative government of Steven Harper in Canada for daring to regulate banks; he is contesting the right of Basle II to force banks to have at least eight percent of liquidity in trust in the case of another run on banks; he has mightily contributed to the banking lobby in Washington to buy Congressmen; and now, faced with a growing 'Occupy Wall Street' protest he has openly but hardly made known to the public, contributed millions to the New York City police to beef up its ability to electronically monitor the swelling ranks of the anti Wall Street and Corporate protests, in order to protect his interests instead of the good of the commonweal.
JPMorgan, let's point out, was among the first to configure and profit largely from subprime mortgages and fancy financial instruments that even bankers didn't understand. Jaime Dimon did, and the 'Financial Times' of London US bureau chief Gillian Tett documents his story in her 'Fool's Gold'. Still, Dimon has billions in rotten subprime loans on its books. Consider the us$400.000 billion smelly holdings in California real estate; they remain at full value on JPM's books, and Dimon has resisted devaluing them in order to restore a semblance of financial health, in order to avoid his stockholders', institutional and individual, wrath.
A few millions in crumbs to New York City's police is worth the expense: Dimon is a firm believer in law and order when he is the law and the order. And that is a sterling example of class warfare.
Feeding large from the public's trough of free cash payouts, he's is battling hard and strong against anyone or any government wishing to put regulatory restraints on 'casino capitalism' which buoyed up big bracket banks and profits and generous bonuses.
He has criticised the conservative government of Steven Harper in Canada for daring to regulate banks; he is contesting the right of Basle II to force banks to have at least eight percent of liquidity in trust in the case of another run on banks; he has mightily contributed to the banking lobby in Washington to buy Congressmen; and now, faced with a growing 'Occupy Wall Street' protest he has openly but hardly made known to the public, contributed millions to the New York City police to beef up its ability to electronically monitor the swelling ranks of the anti Wall Street and Corporate protests, in order to protect his interests instead of the good of the commonweal.
JPMorgan, let's point out, was among the first to configure and profit largely from subprime mortgages and fancy financial instruments that even bankers didn't understand. Jaime Dimon did, and the 'Financial Times' of London US bureau chief Gillian Tett documents his story in her 'Fool's Gold'. Still, Dimon has billions in rotten subprime loans on its books. Consider the us$400.000 billion smelly holdings in California real estate; they remain at full value on JPM's books, and Dimon has resisted devaluing them in order to restore a semblance of financial health, in order to avoid his stockholders', institutional and individual, wrath.
A few millions in crumbs to New York City's police is worth the expense: Dimon is a firm believer in law and order when he is the law and the order. And that is a sterling example of class warfare.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Occupy Wall Street: What a difference a week makes
At the news of hour on the BBC a young American voice, the voice of David Levy, a participant in the 'Occupy Wall Street' protest, now in its third week.
The hyperactive New York City police has become the campaign against Wall Street greed's best advertiser. Last week, the arm of the law used pepper spray followed by 90 arrests. Yesterday, the blue shirts arrested 700 for a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge. Accounts vary, but the police, it seems, set a trap for the protesters by allowing many of them to walk on the roadway without warning that they could and would be arrested. And arrested they were in staggering numbers, in what looks as though they were victims of entrapments.
The high numbers arrested will bring more media coverage and will swell the ranks of the protesters who call themselves 'the 99 percenters'.
'Occupy Wall Street' has encouraged others across the countries to come out in the streets and denounce the Wall Street bankers whose unregulated behaviour gave birth to the 2008 global recession. For the 99 percenters the global economic downturn which favoured the bankers and disenfranchised the vast majority of Americans who are un or underemployed, thrown out of homes, lost medical coverage, and in general, whose loss in economic status pushed them closer to poverty and debt. Contrast this reality with the one percent who control 25 percent of the annual income in America [or hold wealth equal to 140 million Americans] and ever increasing in wealth and privilege.
Say 'Wall Street', anyone on Main Street [High Street] immediately knows what it means and how much does the centre of US finance capitalism has turned his every life a hell for survival.
Talk to anyone at Liberty [Zuccotti] Park where the protesters have set up their headquarters, he or she will tell you the high debt she holds for a university degree which holds no key to a job. And he knows that his prospects for employment that matches his qualifications are almost nil, and before him lies a future of menial, minimum wage job which would barely keep life and limb together. Talk to a young banker who fell from the height of a good salary to being thrown out of work and on the dole with at least us$100.000 debt he collected for his master's of business administration. Talk to the young man who had to drop out of school to work, say, in a McDonald's at minimum wage to bring money to a family with a father has been out of work for soon four years. Speak to the single mum who had to give her children to forster care. Talk to the older man whose 40l(k) portfolio shrank radically thanks to the games Wall Street banks played with his savings, to their profit and his loss of a comfortable old age. Multiple these individuals by millions and you get the idea as to why 'Occupy Wall Street' sprang up as if by spontaneous combustion.
And the bankers and the superrich who buy and influece government --municipal, state, or federal--for padding their own wealth and comfort, whilst dumping fiscal responsabilities on the vast majority of Americans least able.
So, yes, a week since pepper spraying protesters, 'Occupy Wall Street' has grabbed the attention of the world, but not the US government. The police, the guardians of the property classes, view the protesters through the lens of terrorism. Little wonder the methods law enforcement senior managers enforce are extrene without a blush that they might be transgressing the law itself and constitutional and civil rights of the protesters.
The hyperactive New York City police has become the campaign against Wall Street greed's best advertiser. Last week, the arm of the law used pepper spray followed by 90 arrests. Yesterday, the blue shirts arrested 700 for a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge. Accounts vary, but the police, it seems, set a trap for the protesters by allowing many of them to walk on the roadway without warning that they could and would be arrested. And arrested they were in staggering numbers, in what looks as though they were victims of entrapments.
The high numbers arrested will bring more media coverage and will swell the ranks of the protesters who call themselves 'the 99 percenters'.
'Occupy Wall Street' has encouraged others across the countries to come out in the streets and denounce the Wall Street bankers whose unregulated behaviour gave birth to the 2008 global recession. For the 99 percenters the global economic downturn which favoured the bankers and disenfranchised the vast majority of Americans who are un or underemployed, thrown out of homes, lost medical coverage, and in general, whose loss in economic status pushed them closer to poverty and debt. Contrast this reality with the one percent who control 25 percent of the annual income in America [or hold wealth equal to 140 million Americans] and ever increasing in wealth and privilege.
Say 'Wall Street', anyone on Main Street [High Street] immediately knows what it means and how much does the centre of US finance capitalism has turned his every life a hell for survival.
Talk to anyone at Liberty [Zuccotti] Park where the protesters have set up their headquarters, he or she will tell you the high debt she holds for a university degree which holds no key to a job. And he knows that his prospects for employment that matches his qualifications are almost nil, and before him lies a future of menial, minimum wage job which would barely keep life and limb together. Talk to a young banker who fell from the height of a good salary to being thrown out of work and on the dole with at least us$100.000 debt he collected for his master's of business administration. Talk to the young man who had to drop out of school to work, say, in a McDonald's at minimum wage to bring money to a family with a father has been out of work for soon four years. Speak to the single mum who had to give her children to forster care. Talk to the older man whose 40l(k) portfolio shrank radically thanks to the games Wall Street banks played with his savings, to their profit and his loss of a comfortable old age. Multiple these individuals by millions and you get the idea as to why 'Occupy Wall Street' sprang up as if by spontaneous combustion.
And the bankers and the superrich who buy and influece government --municipal, state, or federal--for padding their own wealth and comfort, whilst dumping fiscal responsabilities on the vast majority of Americans least able.
So, yes, a week since pepper spraying protesters, 'Occupy Wall Street' has grabbed the attention of the world, but not the US government. The police, the guardians of the property classes, view the protesters through the lens of terrorism. Little wonder the methods law enforcement senior managers enforce are extrene without a blush that they might be transgressing the law itself and constitutional and civil rights of the protesters.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Victor Cha lectures North Korea
In policy circles Victor Cha is well known. And why shouldn't he be? Didn't he advise Bush junior on North Korea? Today, he teaches at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and is a senior advisor at the Centre for Stratgic and International Studies.
So when Cha speaks on North Korea, he is heard. In Friday's 30 October edition of 'the Financial Times of London', his thinking on North Korea found its way in the opinion page: "Kim Jong-il must see the dark path that follows failed talks".
Advisor Victor Cha brings nothing new to the table. The Achilles heel in his opinion piece is that the Obama administration's policy towards North Korea is tightly yoked to South Korea's president Lee Myung bak's hard line standpoint towards Kim Jong il's regime. Consequently, the US has its hands tied in moves to restart the suspended Six Party talks in Beijing. And I suggest the Obama administration is comfortable with that arrangement.
This US-South Korea axis seen from Pyongyang sets off alarm bells as the US and ROK are strengthening South Korea abilities to go toe to toe with North Korea in a "balance of terror" scenario in the divided Korean peninsula. Consider the following: the placement of Israeli supplied missiles on the DMZ; the sale of hight-altitude drones known as "RQ-Global Hawks" which will allow South Korea to spy more closely on what is happening on the ground in the DPRK; the construction of the Gangjung naval facility on Jeju Island which will accomadate 20 warships (mainly American) and house US state of the art Aegis missiles. The South Korea armed force as of 2010 had the reported strength of 3,853,00 (653,000 active and 3,200,000 reserve forces). The US supplements South Korea military with 28,000 military stationed in South Korea, and in the Yellow and East (Japan) Seas, the "USS George Washington", an American nuclear powered super carrier, is not only moored in Busan but also patrols Korean waters, especially along the Northern Limit Line in close proximity to North Korea's offshore boundaries.
If as Cha posits that North Korea's nuclear and rocket programs raise great fears, the same criticisms can be applied to US-ROK's race to turn South Korea into military bulwark that raise the specter of war.
Since the test for Washington and Seoul is North Korea's expression of "sincerity" (whatever that means), the two allies are doing their worst to give the DPRK any reasonable opportunity for returning to the negotiating table in Beijing.
So when Cha speaks on North Korea, he is heard. In Friday's 30 October edition of 'the Financial Times of London', his thinking on North Korea found its way in the opinion page: "Kim Jong-il must see the dark path that follows failed talks".
Advisor Victor Cha brings nothing new to the table. The Achilles heel in his opinion piece is that the Obama administration's policy towards North Korea is tightly yoked to South Korea's president Lee Myung bak's hard line standpoint towards Kim Jong il's regime. Consequently, the US has its hands tied in moves to restart the suspended Six Party talks in Beijing. And I suggest the Obama administration is comfortable with that arrangement.
This US-South Korea axis seen from Pyongyang sets off alarm bells as the US and ROK are strengthening South Korea abilities to go toe to toe with North Korea in a "balance of terror" scenario in the divided Korean peninsula. Consider the following: the placement of Israeli supplied missiles on the DMZ; the sale of hight-altitude drones known as "RQ-Global Hawks" which will allow South Korea to spy more closely on what is happening on the ground in the DPRK; the construction of the Gangjung naval facility on Jeju Island which will accomadate 20 warships (mainly American) and house US state of the art Aegis missiles. The South Korea armed force as of 2010 had the reported strength of 3,853,00 (653,000 active and 3,200,000 reserve forces). The US supplements South Korea military with 28,000 military stationed in South Korea, and in the Yellow and East (Japan) Seas, the "USS George Washington", an American nuclear powered super carrier, is not only moored in Busan but also patrols Korean waters, especially along the Northern Limit Line in close proximity to North Korea's offshore boundaries.
If as Cha posits that North Korea's nuclear and rocket programs raise great fears, the same criticisms can be applied to US-ROK's race to turn South Korea into military bulwark that raise the specter of war.
Since the test for Washington and Seoul is North Korea's expression of "sincerity" (whatever that means), the two allies are doing their worst to give the DPRK any reasonable opportunity for returning to the negotiating table in Beijing.
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