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They were predicted to be a flash in the pan. So why are the anti-Wall Street occupations growing?

#OccupyWallStreet protests are now well into their second week, and they are increasingly capturing the public spotlight. This is because, whatever limitations their occupation has, the protesters have done many things right.

I will admit that I was skeptical about the #OccupyWallStreet effort when it was getting started. My main concerns were the limited number of participants and the lack of coalition building. One of the things that was most exciting about the protests in Madison—and the global justice protests of old such as Seattle and A16—was that they brought together a wide range of constituencies, suggesting what a broad, inclusive progressive movement might look like. You had student activists and unaffiliated anarchists, sure; but you also had major institutional constituencies including the labor movement, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, and community groups. The solidarity was powerful. And, in the context of a broader coalition, the militancy, creativity, and artistic contributions of the autonomist factions made up for their lack of an organized membership base.

With #OccupyWallStreet, the protest did not draw in any of the major institutional players on the left. Participants have come independently—mostly from anarchist and student activist circles—and turnout has been limited. Some of the higher estimates for the first day’s gathering suggest that a thousand people might have been there, and only a few hundred have been camping out.

That said, this relatively small group has been holding strong. As their message has gained traction—first in the alternative media, and then in mainstream news sources—they have drawn wider interest. On Tuesday night, Cornel West visited the occupied Zuccotti Park and spoke to an audience estimated at 2,000. Rallies planned for later in the week will likely attract larger crowds. People will come because the occupation is now a hot story.

#OccupyWallStreet has accomplished a great deal in the past week and a half, with virtually no resources. The following are some of the things the participants have done that allowed what might have been a negligible and insignificant protest to achieve a remarkable level of success:

1. They chose the right target.

The #OccupyWallStreet protesters have been often criticized for not having clear demands. They endured a particularly annoying cheap shot from New York Times writer Ginia Bellafante, who (quoting a stockbroker sympathetically) resurrected the old canard that no one who uses an Apple computer can possibly say anything critical about capitalism. Such charges are as predictable as the tides. Media commentators love to condescend to protesters, and they endlessly recycle criticism of protests being naïve and unfocused.

I am among those who believe that the occupation would have benefited from having clearer demands at the outset—and that these would have been helpful in shaping the endgame that is to come. But protesters have largely overcome the lack of a particularly well-defined messaging strategy by doing something very important: choosing the right target.

Few institutions in our society are more in need of condemnation than the big banks and stockbrokers based where the critics are now camped. “Why are people protesting Wall Street?” For anyone who has lived through the recent economic collapse and the ongoing crises of foreclosure and unemployment, this question almost answers itself.

The protest’s initial call to action repeatedly stressed the need to get Wall Street money out of politics, demanding “Democracy not Corporatocracy.” Since then, many protesters have been emphasizing the idea that “We Are the 99 Percent” being screwed by the country’s wealthiest 1 percent. At Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power—in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions—is destroying financial security for everyone else?….

So, yes, the people willing to engage in protests like these at the start may lack (or reject the need for) media strategies, organizational hierarchies, and messaging theories. But they’re among the very few people trying to channel widespread anger into activism rather than resignation, and thus deserve support and encouragement—and help—from anyone claiming to be sympathetic to their underlying message.

Notably, young protesters have been able to convey the idea that their generation, in particular, has been betrayed by our economy. This idea was picked up in remarkably hard-hitting commentary at MarketWatch.com, which reads like more like something you’d expect to find in the socialist press than on a business website:

[A]sk yourself how you might act if you were in school or fresh out of it or young and unemployed. What future has Wall Street, the heart and brain of our capitalist country, promised you? How does it feel to be the sons, daughters and grand kids of a “me” generation that’s run up the debt and run down the economy?

Unemployment is between 13% and 25% for people under 25. Student loans are defaulting at about 15% at a time when more young people have no alternative but to borrow to pay for school.

Meanwhile, Wall Street bonuses continue to be paid at close to all-time highs. Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS), took home $13.2 million last year, including a $3.2 million raise.

Such a message resonates with many, and protesters did something important to attract them:

2. They made a great poster.

I write this partially in jest. There is a joke among labor organizers that if you are spending all your time obsessing over the quality of your posters or handouts, rather than going out to actually talk to people, you are in big trouble.

In this case, however, there’s some truth to the idea that posters matter. When you’re not mobilizing an established organizational membership, but rather trying to capture the imagination of unaffiliated activists, protest planning is more akin to promoting a concert than staging a workplace strike. And if you’re doing that kind of promotion, how cool your call to arms is makes a difference.

#OccupyWallStreet has benefited from a series of great posters and promotional materials. Foremost among them is a lovely depiction of a ballerina dancing on top of Wall Street’s famous bull statue, created by the veteran leftist image-makers at Adbusters. The text below the bull reads simply: “#OccupyWallStreet. September 17th. Bring tent.”

The poster hinted that the event would be exciting and creative and audacious. It suggested that culture jamming and dissident art would be part of the adventure. And it pointed to another thing the protesters did right:

3. They gave their action time to build.

Most protests take place for one afternoon and then are finished. Had #OccupyWallStreet done the same, it would already have been forgotten.

Instead, planners told participants to get ready to camp out. The event operated on the premise that challenging Wall Street would take a while, and that things would build with time. In fact, this is exactly what has happened. It took a few days for alternative press sources to catch on, but now the occupation is a leading story at outlets such as Democracy Now!.

The extended time frame for the protest has allowed for the drama of direct action to deepen, which is my next point about the protesters:

4. They created a good scenario for conflict.

By claiming space in Zuccotti Park (also known as Liberty Plaza), #OccupyWallStreet set up an action scenario that has effectively created suspense and generated interest over time.

Participants there have invoked Tahrir Square. On the one hand, the comparison is silly, but on the other hand, the fact that occupations of public space have taken on a new significance in the past year is another thing that made #OccupyWallStreet a good idea. If the authorities allow them to continue camping out in lower Manhattan, the protesters can claim victory for their experiment in “liberated space.” Of course, everyone expects that police will eventually swoop in and clear the park. But, contrary to what some people think, civil disobedients have long known that arrests do not work against the movement. Rather, they illustrate that participants are willing to make real sacrifices to speak out against Wall Street’s evils.

The fact that police have used undue force (in one now-famous incident, pepper spraying women who were already detained in a mesh police pen and clearly doing nothing to resist arrest) only reinforces this message.

When will the police finally come and clear out the occupation’s encampment? We don’t know. And the very question creates further suspense and allows the protest to continue gaining momentum.

5. They are using their momentum to escalate.

Lastly, but probably most importantly, the #OccupyWallStreet effort is using its success at garnering attention in the past week and a half to go even bigger. Their action is creating offshoots, with solidarity protests (#OccupyBoston, #OccupyLA) now gathering in many other cities. Protesters in Liberty Plaza are encouraging more participants to join them. And they are preparing more people to risk arrest or other police reprisal.

It might seem obvious that a protest movement would treat a successful event as an occasion to escalate. But, in fact, it is quite rare. More established organizations are almost invariably afraid to do so: afraid of legal repercussions, afraid of the resources it would require to sustain involvement, afraid of bad press or other negative outcomes. Such timidity is anathema to strategies of nonviolent direct action.

In this respect, the fact that #OccupyWallStreet has not relied on established progressive organizations ends up being a strength. Its independent participants are inspired by the increasing attention their critique of Wall Street is getting, and they are willing to make greater sacrifices now that their action has begun to capture the public imagination.

This can only be regarded as a positive development. For the more that people in this country are talking about why outraged citizens would set up camp in the capital of our nation’s financial sector, the better off we will be. #OccupyWallStreet protesters have gotten that much right.

By Mark Engler

30 September, 2011

YES! Magazine

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com. He is a contributor to Dissent Magazine, where this article originally appeared.

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The European institutions have clearly changed course in relation to Greece. Instead of the “rescue” of the country, they are now discussing its bankruptcy, and reducing the risk of contagion. The euro rescue fund, supposed to guarantee Greece’s solvency, is being used to secure the creditor banks against the consequences of state bankruptcy.

The change of course has happened gradually, under the pressure of intense fluctuations on the stock exchanges and financial markets, the threat of bank failures and growing opposition to the austerity measures of the Greek government. But it follows unmistakeable class logic.

The fear of an uncontrollable chain reaction had previously prevented the EU from risking a collapse of Greece. They feared the bankruptcy of the largest creditor banks, which in turn would have drawn more banks into the abyss—like Lehman Brothers in the US after its bankruptcy in September 2008. Other heavily indebted countries such as Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy are also threatened with being cut off from access to credit if Greece, a member of the euro zone, goes bankrupt.

Under these circumstances, Greece’s billion-euro rescue packages serve to gain time. They have not benefited the Greek state, and certainly not the Greek population, but went directly into the coffers of the creditor banks, which received their loans repaid in full with all interest due. The European Central Bank also bought large quantities of Greek government bonds on the open market, thus relieving the risks banks faced from their additional papers.

The Greek rescue packages have been linked to drastic cost-cutting measures, which from the outset ruled out Greece’s mounting an economic recovery. Even to a layperson, it was obvious that the recession caused by the austerity measures would nullify any budgetary savings.

The purpose of the austerity measures was not so much to restructure the budget, but to ruin the working class. Under the dictates of the so-called troika—the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund—the Greek government has cut pensions and incomes, destroyed tens of thousands of public sector jobs and driven the self-employed into bankruptcy by raising taxes, while the rich elite have hoarded their wealth in foreign bank accounts.

Meanwhile, protests against these measures are increasingly threatening the Greek government. This month alone there have been several general strikes and protest actions. The unions, which are working closely with the government, are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the resistance under control.

The representatives of the troika have concluded from this that the time has come to abandon Greece. State bankruptcy would mean that the government had no funds to pay salaries and pensions, as well as for other public spending. Just as US automotive firms exploited bankruptcy procedures to wipe out their financial obligations to the workforce in one stroke, the Greek government could effectively annul its existing contracts and legal arrangements. The question then would not be how many jobs would be eliminated and how far salaries were being cut, but who has a job at all.

Greek state bankruptcy would also be used to intimidate workers in the other European countries. It would represent an unequivocal threat, showing what awaits them if they do not accept the austerity measures being imposed by their own governments.

In Greece itself, state bankruptcy would provoke violent social unrest. But the EU expects to be able to isolate this with the help of the unions, who have so far refused to organise any international solidarity with the Greek workers. The Greek military has also spoken out again, and threatened to bring down the PASOK government. Under the rule of the “colonels”, the military suppressed the Greek working class from 1967 to 1974 with a bloody dictatorship.

The main concern of the EU at present is how to prevent a Greek state bankruptcy from bringing down international banks and other European countries. All the decisions and debates of the last weeks and days revolved around this question.

The euro zone governments had already agreed in June to increase the euro rescue fund (EFSF) and expand its powers. Rather than simply provide credit guarantees to ailing euro zone countries, the EFSF may now also buy up government bonds of vulnerable states on the open market and so remove the risks facing the banks.

Increasing the banks’ capital holdings with funds from the EFSF or other public monies is also now up for discussion. This was the central theme at the meeting of EU finance ministers on Tuesday last week. The ministers commissioned the European Banking Authority (EBA) to verify the resilience of the European banks if Greece were to default on its payments.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also agreed to this line. If banks urgently needed money, the European states should not delay financial aid because this would be “money reasonably invested”, she said after a meeting with EU President Jose Manuel Barroso and the leaders of the main international financial institutions.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank decided, in turn, to support threatened banks with large amounts of money.

In other words, instead of rescuing euro zone countries faced with bankruptcy, the funds of the euro rescue package and the ECB are now being used to bail out the banks when indebted countries go bankrupt.

Experts believe that the European banks need at least €200 billion to €300 billion of additional capital to survive a Greek state bankruptcy. Like the bank bailout in the 2008 financial crisis, these funds would be recouped again through austerity measures at the expense of working people.

Many politicians and media representatives now regard a Greek state bankruptcy as a certainty.

Spiegel Online commented on the events of last week, saying: “Now the financial institutions are to be supported with taxpayers’ money. That might be cheaper than rescuing countries in crisis.”

And Europe’s leading financial newspaper, the Financial Times, published a comment on Thursday under the headline “Save the euro—let Greece default”.

“Given its debt, its budget and current account deficits and its woeful lack of competitiveness, Greece cannot escape the debt trap”, it stated. “Austerity piled on austerity will simply kill the patient.”

To manage the country’s bankruptcy, the Financial Times calls for “a co-ordinated recapitalisation of the banks and a quadrupling to €2,000bn or so in the firepower of the European Financial Stability Facility.” The bill for these measures will have to be paid by working people throughout Europe, in the form of further cuts and austerity measures.

The preparations for Greek state bankruptcy mark a new stage in the offensive of the ruling financial elite against the working class. This offensive can only be answered by a common struggle of European workers on the basis of a socialist programme, which focuses on the expropriation of the banks and big corporations and the establishment of the United Socialist States of Europe.

By Peter Schwarz

European businesses and consumers face at least 20 years of electricity price rises, according to a leaked European Commission report on how the region can meet its green energy targets.

It also forecasts a huge growth in the number of wind farms, which would push up prices even higher.

In an assessment that examines a range of ways in which fossil fuels such as coal can be replaced with cleaner sources of energy, the 112-page report says all scenarios point to wind farms becoming the biggest source of electricity in the bloc by 2050, outstripping both coal and nuclear power.

Wind farms could provide as much as 49 per cent of EU electricity by that date, the report suggests, up from just 5 per cent today.

Average electricity prices for households and businesses would rise “strongly up to 2020-2030” under all scenarios, the document says, and the highest prices would occur after 2030 if renewable sources of power, such as wind and solar, make up a large share of energy production. For example, average prices for households could jump by more than 100 per cent by 2050 if this were the case but only by 43 per cent under a scenario that assumed more nuclear power and carbon capture and storage were used.

The report suggests this would be partly due to new infrastructure investments but it also appears to assume that conventional fuel plants would not run as much as they do now, meaning higher prices would have to be charged to cover initial investment costs.

The report is a draft impact assessment of the sorts of energy policies needed if European Union countries are to meet their goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

It is now circulating as officials prepare what the commission calls its “Energy Roadmap to 2050”, due to be released by the end of this year.

The assessment shows what would happen to prices, costs and energy sources under five different scenarios to make the EU less dependent on conventional fossil fuels such as coal and gas, which now account for more than half the electricity generated in the bloc.

Nuclear plants are the next biggest source, with a share of 28 per cent, while wind and hydro-electric plants, the two main sources of renewable energy, produce a combined total of 18 per cent.

 Of the five scenarios examined, the highest electricity prices are forecast in a “high renewables” scenario which envisages more supply of North Sea off-shore wind plus “significant” concentrated solar power – plants that concentrate the sun’s rays to produce steam and drive a turbine – and micro power generation from solar and wind.

The cheapest prices are predicted in a so-called “diversified supply” scenario, which assumes support for renewable energy but also acceptance of nuclear power and the commercial viability of carbon capture and storage.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission’s energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, said she was unable to comment on leaked documents.

By Pilita Clark

16 October 2011

@ The Financial Times

It began in Tunisia and Egypt, then spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. It spilled into Spain, Greece, and Ireland. It leapfrogged to Wall Street. And this past weekend it erupted in London, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Taipei, and Sydney. In hundreds of towns and cities around the world the uprising’s refrain is similar: economic misery resulting from fizzling economic growth is leading protesters to question corruption both in governments and in financial institutions, and to demand an end to extreme economic inequality.

As long as economies grew, inequality was tolerable. And if the rabble demanded perks, governments could simply borrow money to fund social programs. Corruption could fester unnoticed. But now the economic tide is no longer lifting all boats. Bursting financial bubbles have led economies to contract. That has in turn led to falling tax revenues, which have made existing government debts in several key countries unrepayable. Therefore government bonds held by banks as assets suddenly have little value. Which causes the economy to teeter further. The system is broken.

The universal solution: austerity—a strategy of cutting government spending, government jobs, and government services to the poor and middle classes. Suddenly social safety nets are being withdrawn, and extreme economic inequality is no longer socially tolerable.

The only thing that could stop the uprising is a return to growth—which would generate new jobs, higher tax revenues, and solvency in the financial industry. But instead the world economy seems poised on a precipice perhaps more dangerous than the one it faced in 2008. This means the protesters likely aren’t going home anytime soon. For governments, there are only two realistic responses: repression or major reform

Brutal police and military repression of the protests could buy time for politicians, but it would solve nothing. The unrest would go underground and tear at the social fabric, leading eventually to revolution or societal breakdown.

Reform, if it is to make a difference, must be fundamental. It must start by addressing issues of economic inequality, but then must eliminate the massive debt overhang that plagues not just governments but households and the entire financial sector. In essence, policy makers must cobble together a new economic model that meets human needs in the absence of economic growth.

Politicians take note: Forces are being unleashed that cannot be tamed. So far, crisis has been dealt with by a combination of denial and delay. Those tactics no longer work. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

By Richard Heinberg

17 October 2011

@ Post Carbon Institute

Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute. He is the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the soon-to-be-released The End of Growth. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels.

Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has given an interview to Al Jazeera, ending his feud with a channel he once described as “vicious”.

Questioned by Sir David Frost, Bush’s former right-hand man, who many see as the architect of the second Gulf War, struck a conciliatory tone in the interview.

“Its audience has grown and it can be an important means of communication in the world,” he said of the channel.

“I am delighted you are doing what you are doing.”

The interview is to be broadcast on Al Jazeera English on Friday night.

The Al Jazeera network started in 1996 as an Arabic news channel, and was the first rolling-news media operation to be based in the Middle East.

The channel came to western attention following the 9/11 attacks, when it routinely aired broadcasts of Osama bin Laden.

It quickly gained a reputation among many in the west as a mouthpiece for Al-Qaeda, promoting Islamic militancy and a strong anti-western message.

In 2001, a US bomb destroyed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul; an incident the Bush Administration maintained was an “accident”.

Relations between the network and Washington were further strained when in 2003 a US plane fired upon the channel’s office in Baghdad, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Again, US authorities called the incident a “mistake”.

On April 15 2004, Rumsfeld denounced the TV station at a Pentagon briefing, calling its reporting of the Iraq War “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable”.

“They are simply lying,” Rumsfeld said following an Al Jazeera report that an American assault on Fallujah was terrorizing citizens.

The nadir of the relationship came a day later when President Bush reportedly told Prime Minister Tony Blair that he wanted to bomb the channel’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Reports emerged of the conversation later that year based on transcripts, though it remains unknown exactly what was said or as to whether Bush was joking.

That November, the White House referred to the reports of the conversation as “outlandish”, however Wadah Khanfar, then the director-general of Al Jazeera, sent a letter to Downing Street demanding clarification from Blair as to what was said in the meeting.

The English version of the channel launched in 2006 with veteran presenter Frost as its marquee name. Its launch, along with the end of the Bush regime, led to a thawing of relations. In April this year, President Obama hosted Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, the new boss of the channel, in Washington.

Suspicions remain as to the impartiality of the channel’s Dohar operation, but the Rumsfeld interview, along with a recent broadcast of Frost and David Cameron, provides some indication of Al Jazeera’s more accepted standing in the halls of Washington and London.

First Posted: 30/9/11 00:00 GMT Updated: 1/10/11 11:37 GMT Paul Vale (The Huffington Post)

Chomsky vividly shares his reflections on the wall street protests and warns of an impending serious poverty and real unemployment similar to the great depression, he talks about the 2012 American presidential campaign spending and how positions in both the white house and the congress are being bought, not earned and he refers to the killing of Osama Bin Laden and how this marks a shift of American policy from Bush’s abducting and torturing whoever the CIA thought posed a threat to the U.S to Obama’s “just kill `em when you spot `em” approach regardless of the legalities overlooked in the process.

He concludes that the killing of Osama Bin Laden was done, in such a way, as to infuriate, and may be implicate the Pakistani military, something he seriously regards as extremely dangerous.

In regard to the Arab spring, Chomsky acknowledges that the U.S and its western allies did not support the Tunisian or the Egyptian revolutions; rather they opposed them, and backed the dictator till the last minute and then shifted policy when they were overthrown.

Pinning its hopes on the sole support of the US, Chomsky warns “the Zionist state would risk a collapse if that support was to be withdrawn or compromised – much like apartheid-era South Africa.” He recalls how South Africans felt safe to ignore a UN embargo and corporations pulling out of their country throughout the 1980s, as long as the Reagan administration continued to support them.

As soon as the US withdrew its support, the apartheid regime collapsed. “For 35 years, the US and Israel have been rejecting a political settlement that is supported virtually by the entire world.

A couple of months ago, there was a meeting of the oligarchs — people who pretty much run the economy of Israel,” Chomsky says, “and they warned the government that it better accept something like this resolution, because otherwise, Israel will be, as they put it, South Africanized: even more isolated, with boycotts, refusal to load ships, and their economy will collapse.”

By Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

Austerity not the way to go for Europe

Most economists thought that when the euro was put together, it was an incomplete task. They’d taken out too many adjustment mechanisms and had not put anything in its place.

One of the things that makes the American common currency work across the country is we have a common fiscal authority and high migration – we’re willing to allow North Dakota to become empty.

In Europe, there’s no fiscal authority, migration is more difficult and most of the countries are not willing to let themselves become empty. So the framework for allowing for an effective common currency is not there.

Now you might be able to make up for the deficiencies in one part by strengthening another part, for instance by having a stronger fiscal authority. But they don’t have that.

What they did fiscally was tie themselves to the stability and growth pact, which was a pact for recession rather than for growth because limiting deficits when you have a shock is a recipe for recession, which is what is happening in Greece.

So the question was always: when a crisis occurred would they be able to finish the task? And I think the jury is still out.

Misguided

The agreement that they made in July was a reasonably good agreement. It recognised that Greece needed help to grow but they haven’t put in any money and the process of ratification has been very slow.

So I think it’s really a question that has not yet been resolved.

There are a number of institutional ways of going about helping to resolve it. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) needs to be larger or to have more ability to leverage itself. That’s a minimum.

Over the longer term they’re going to need European bonds and a number of other actions, and they have to recognise the framework of austerity is not the way to go.

Issuing bonds should be one part of the fiscal framework.

The problem with the eurozone was the one part of the framework that they thought they needed was limiting fiscal deficits and that was just a misguided analysis.

Ireland and Spain had surpluses before the crisis. But they thought that having limited fiscal deficits was necessary and sufficient for protecting the economic framework and that was just wrong.

Politics

The July agreement was a good start if they implement it quickly. But that’s not been happening.

Let me say, for democracy it’s not been that slow. Two months to get landmark legislation through is not a long time. But markets move quickly. So I don’t criticise the fact that there’s been a deliberate pace – that’s the nature of democracy.

My criticism is they didn’t do anything in the 10 years before there was a crisis.

I suspect that we’re going to see a lot of volatility. Whether at the end the eurozone will emerge intact or not, it’s hard at this point to say.

It all depends on the politics. Even though I think the commitment of the leaders to do something is there, the political process in some ways is not in tune with the economics. The problems are deep.

I think there is a reasonably good chance that a year from now you would find the eurozone smaller than what it is today.

There’s a broad consensus among economists that the best way of doing it would be for the northern European countries to leave. That would be the easiest adjustment.

But the general view is that is not what’s going to happen. The view is that some of the weaker countries will leave and that will lead to very large trauma in the global financial markets such as freezing the credit markets, a repeat of 15 September 2008 (when Lehman Brothers collapsed).

Growth potential

If Europe insists on going forward with the kind of austerity packages in Germany and without the kind of assistance they need to help those countries with severe economic problems, such as Greece, then almost surely the eurozone will break up.

But if they come forward with that money, then it can survive, at least for a while.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the one institution that has the kind of flexibility that is necessary to deal with the crisis. It will be absolutely essential, because they will be able to step into the breach and be willing to do that.

Now the problem is that some people in Germany and elsewhere have said the ECB should not be buying Italian and Spanish bonds and that it should not be stepping into the breach. But if the ECB doesn’t do that, then the eurozone’s prospects are very, very bleak.

It’s not inevitable that Greece will default if they come forward with enough assistance for it to grow. It has enormous growth potential, so if Europe comes up with enough money, it will grow and that will enable it to manage its debts.

But so far I’ve seen nothing in the form of growth assistance as opposed to austerity assistance just to meet its budget shortfall, and I’m not very optimistic that it will avoid a default.

By  Joseph Stiglitz

3 October 2011

@ BBC News

Joseph Stiglitz is a Professor at Columbia University and also a recipient of a Nobel Prize in Economics and a former chief economist at the World Bank.

Attack on People who Struggle for Land and Future from POSCO

Today (26th Sept 2011), about 400 armed goons of POSCO attacked our villagers at Govindpur village with rod, sticks and hand-bombs at 8.30 AM.  In this sudden attack, more than  30 villagers have been injured including 6 women; two people are critically injured. These injured are not able to go for treatment to the nearest hospital in fear of arrest as police has already booked false cases against them in the earlier incidents.

This is a new trick made by the government and POSCO to enter into our area. The government made a plan to build a coastal road along the beach from the Indian Oil Refinery complex to the port near to our village for POSCO.  As you  know that we have prevented the entry of the police from the side of the land mass by peacefully sitting in Dharana, the government is considering this as an alternative  road to make entry from sea side.  The construction has been contracted to Paradeep Paribahan, a private company led by Bapi Circle.  On 19th of August 2011, the government has laid the foundation for road construction. On 20th of August, around 400 people including the contractor and workers were proceeding to the site during the day; our people protested the move and chased them away.

Today,  Bapi Circle who is also known as mafia leader from the ruling party Biju Janata Dal ( BJD),  brought armed goons from outside the area and lead the attack . Our villagers are chased with sticks and bombs are also being thrown on our unarmed villagers. The  leader of the Contractors’ association has admitted to have attacked the people in front of electronic media. Police did not arrive in the place. Now, our people are in high alert to face any imminent attack  by private militia. Our villagers are strongly determined not to allow the construction of the road.

We request all of you to strongly condemned this heinous attack and expose this unholy nexus between POSCO and the state government in a strong word. This is a very planned and calculated move to crush our peaceful democratic movement against the forceful displacement. The malicious plan of the government to project all this situation as a law and order problem in the media and accordingly police will enter in to our area. This is nothing but a very shameful act of POSCO to terrorize the villagers. We all are determined to continue our struggle democratically.

By Prashant Paikary

Spokesperson, POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti

1 October 2011

With anti-Wall Street protests spreading to over 100 US cities and towns, President Barack Obama at a White House press conference Thursday cynically sought to exploit the outpouring of spontaneous anger at the banks and big business as a vehicle for his reelection bid.

On Thursday, new Occupy Wall Street protests sprang up in a number of major cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington, Tampa, Dallas, Houston and Austin. They came on the heels of the largest demonstration so far in New York City, where an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 marched through lower Manhattan Wednesday night.

The demonstrations are driven by a profound anger over unprecedented levels of social inequality as, three years after the financial meltdown on Wall Street, unemployment and declining wages persist and deepen alongside record profits and increasing wealth for the top one percent.

The first White House reporter who asked Obama about the anti-Wall Street protests stated the obvious about the demonstrators: “They clearly don’t think that you or Republicans have done enough, that you’re in fact part of the problem.”

Obama responded that he had “heard about” the protest movement and “seen it on TV.” He went on to acknowledge that “people are frustrated, and the protestors are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

He followed this indication that he “felt the pain” of those who are demonstrating with an immediate affirmation of his support for “a strong, effective financial sector in order for us to grow.” Referring to his unqualified support for the $750 billion TARP bailout of the banks, he added: “I used up a lot of political capital, and I’ve got the dings and bruises to prove it, in order to make sure that we prevented a financial meltdown, and that banks stayed afloat.”

In New York, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a similar statement on Thursday, defending Wall Street against the protests. “Wall Street is a major economic engine for the state,” he said at a press conference. “When all is said and told, 20 to 25 percent of the state’s income comes from Wall Street.”

In response to a reporter who noted that no Wall Street executives “have gone to jail despite the rampant corruption and malfeasance that did take place,” Obama defended the failure to prosecute any of those responsible for triggering the deepest crisis since the Great Depression. He said that “a lot of that stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless,” and insisted in relation to prosecutions, “that’s not my job, that’s the Attorney General’s job.”

Obama’s feigned sympathy for the protests is part of concerted attempt to channel the movement behind the Democratic Party, which, no less than the Republicans, serves and is financed by the banks and finance houses responsible for the unemployment crisis.

This effort to hijack the protest movement has been spearheaded by the trade unions, which participated in Wednesday’s mass march in New York City. The rally featured a speakers platform packed with bureaucrats who have led no fight of their own against Wall Street and are responsible for betraying the interests of the workers they purport to represent.

The presence of a number of Democratic politicians, none of whom dared to address the rally, was announced from the platform with great enthusiasm, and some of the union bureaucrats present made no bones of the fact that they want to see the Occupy Wall Street movement exploited as a vehicle for the Obama re-election campaign.

The speed with which the anti-Wall Street protests have spread from coast to coast is all the more extraordinary given the persistent refusal of the mass media to give them significant coverage and the attempt in many of the reports that have appeared to mock and belittle them.

“Meetups” had been established in 761 cities by Thursday night, according to the web site Occupy Together [http://www.occupytogether.org], which describes itself as “an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.”

On Thursday, thousands of people initiated an occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington before staging a march past the US Treasury and the White House. The demonstrators chanted, “We Got Sold Out.”

The march ended in front of the US Chamber of Commerce, where marchers shouted, “We Want Jobs! We Want Jobs!” While the protesters have National Park permits allowing them to occupy the plaza only through Sunday, they have vowed to stay indefinitely.

Several hundred demonstrators marched down Tulane Avenue through the financial district of New Orleans on Thursday, rallying in Lafayette Square near the New Orleans branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. WWL radio described the crowd as “racially mixed and mostly young.”

“Most people are not getting a fair shake,” Daniel Brook, one of the marchers, told WWL. “It’s a country where the top one percent controls 90 percent of the wealth, and that’s outrageous. This is supposed to be a democracy. We’re all supposed to be in this together.”

Marches also took place across Texas. Several hundred marched on the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, which was ringed with police barricades. In Houston, hundreds more marched from the JPMorgan Chase building to City Hall chanting, “Banks Got Bailed Out! We Got Sold Out!” A demonstration was also held outside City Hall in the state capital of Austin.

David Larrick Smith, 40, from the Dallas suburb of Rowlett, told the Associated Press that he was protesting “all these billionaires who have bought our government.” He added, “I voted for Obama and he punked out. He had the opportunity to stand for the American people, and he’s become a political puppet.”

Several hundred people began an Occupy Philadelphia demonstration Thursday morning outside City Hall. May Chan, 32, a science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press, “I’m outraged by the whole bailout. I think someone should go to jail.”

In a number of areas, anti-Wall Street protests have met with arrests, brutality and harassment from the police.

In New York City, toward the end of Wednesday’s mass march through lower Manhattan, police used truncheons and pepper spray against unresisting protesters and arrested 28 people after a section of the demonstration tried to march on Wall Street.

Mounted police were brought in to intimidate demonstrators and a number of people suffered injuries as cops threw them to the pavement. The New York City Police Department has met the protests with excessive force over the course of the last several weeks, including last Saturday, when some 700 demonstrators were arrested after they had been led onto the Brooklyn Bridge and then trapped there by police on either side.

In Seattle, more than two-dozen demonstrators were arrested Wednesday after refusing police orders to take down tents in Westlake Park. The protesters have vowed to stay in the park.

In St. Louis, 11 people were arrested shortly after midnight on Thursday morning after police attempted to enforce a ban on demonstrations in Kiener Plaza after 10 pm. Some 100 members of the occupation group were in the plaza at midnight when two dozen squad cars raided the area.

In San Francisco, police in riot gear raided the Occupy SF camp on Market Street Wednesday night.

Occupy SF issued a statement saying that police had warned them to “pack up our tents” or face arrest. While the demonstrators moved to comply by taking down the tents and beginning to move out supplies, “still, the police, wearing helmets and carrying batons, formed a perimeter around our goods and prevented us from saving anything while they supervised Public Works employees as they stole everything. The police stole food, water, shelter and other necessities of life from the 99 percent at Occupy SF.”

Similarly, in Chicago, harassment from the police has become a major concern of protesters. As part of a thoroughly anti-democratic attempt to stamp out and disperse the protest centered around the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Board of Trade and the local headquarters of several major banks, police officials have used a local ordinance to demand that protesters’ personal possessions be kept off of sidewalks and prevent the protesters from sleeping at the site, or even sitting down or standing still.

In response, the demonstrators have become mobile, making sure to keep moving in order to avoid arrest or ticketing, and shifted their supplies to a nearby church. They have also taken to marching around different parts of the downtown area to avoid confrontation and to publicize the protest to more city residents.

In Los Angeles Thursday, eleven protesters were arrested for the “crime” of entering a downtown Bank of America branch carrying a giant check for $673 billion made out to the “People of California.” They were seeking to present the check to the bank when they were detained by security guards and turned over to the Los Angeles police.

The police arrested the six men and five women, part of a crowd of 500 who marched through the downtown area Thursday, and led them to prison in handcuffs. Bail was set at $5,000 per person.

By Bill Van Auken

7 October 2011

WSWS.org