American cops rough up Occupy Wall Street protestor… but the coppers are “union men”. Now, the unions are “out there”, how long shall the cops take orders from the money-grubbing oligarchs and their GOP politico lickspittles? Perspirin’ minds wanna know!
______________________________
Occupy Wall Street… on Saturday, thousands of ordinary Americans tried to occupy the Brooklyn Bridge. Police in the “democratic” USA acted just like the cops in Iran, Egypt, and Greece; they arrested and handcuffed 700 demonstrators, and took them off to court. Many ordinary Americans are tired of the outrageousness of the mega-corporations and the continued support that these corporate giants get from the government. There are plenty of people disgusted with the current atmosphere in America, whose leadership is doing its best to ram its notions down the throats of the entire world. Obviously, today, many Americans feel that the direction of their society’s development is deeply flawed, and are increasingly sceptical of an economic system that no longer evenly distributes its benefits into the wider community, according to an editorial in the Independent .
America’s facing an acute financial and political crisis, and Americans decided to confront it, right in the heart of New York, Wall Street, the financial centre of the world. Moreover, they’ve done it. They shut down the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge, which connects two boroughs of Greater New York (Manhattan and Brooklyn), paralysing traffic for several hours, leaving it in a giant traffic jam. At first, the police tried to get the demonstrators to leave on their own; then, they resorted to mass arrests to clear the bridge. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a speech justifying the police action used purely “authoritarian” terms… “Although people have a right to protest, we must remember that other people have the right to walk the streets in peace and security”. The protesters believe that the police acted too aggressively, and the intelligentsia supports that point of view. “Predatory traders destroyed the global economy, those who protested against that are in jail”, the newspaper The Guardian quoted writer Salman Rushdie as saying.
Saturday’s rally was no fluke… hundreds of demonstrators spent the night in nearby Zucotti Park over the past two weeks, the tabloid The Daily Mail reported. It’s a tent city where people sleep on inflatable mattresses and shower in a nearby McDonalds. These people oppose “Financial terrorism”… they oppose the way the government supports the banks at the expense of ordinary taxpayers and the way it shreds the social safety net. The protesters wish to see higher tax rates on the wealthy, to make large corporations restore to workers their lost benefits, and make the corporations and banks responsible to the people. In their makeshift camp in New York, the protestors have a working pharmacy, a newsstand, IT centre, and even a library. The protestors are ready to occupy this tent city all winter… anything to have their voices heard.
Similar protests have spread across the country…actions in solidarity with the New York rally occurred in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Julian Harrison, a schoolteacher from Portland OR, earns 50,000 USD a year, but it’s barely enough to pay the bills. “Teachers are getting fired throughout the country, and the competition amongst us is growing. Where I live, college grads are fighting for a place in a coffee shop”, he said. However, there isn’t any despair; the Occupy Wall Street “invaders” have fun, too. The Huffington Post compiled a list of songs popular amongst the protesters, including, You Never Give Me Your Money by the Beatles or Creep by Radiohead.
The American rightwing website BloggerNews collects and analyses popular posts in the blogosphere. It claimed that rich young people in fashionable clothes chant anti-capitalist slogans and sleep in tents, but they surf the Internet on Apple laptops. It claims that they’re people who’ve seen too many romantic stories about the events in Tunisia and Egypt and want to feel cool. One of the outraged rightwingers writing for this website expostulated, “What’s happened to our youth? The Liberals {Social Democrats, the US rightwing is full of ignorant ignoramuses: editor} have made this country what it is now, and these rich kids don’t understand that, and they protest against the only viable way of life… they all get together and listen to Radiohead”. Erin Larkins, a graduate of Columbia University, said that she and her boyfriend earn 130,000 USD a year, but they’ve got so many student loans to pay off that they might have to switch to eating rice and beans. “We aren’t asking for much, we just want a normal life”, she said. The rightwingers at BloggerNews chimed in, “However, what’s ‘normal life’ in the understanding of spoiled American students? They probably never heard the saying, ‘There ain’t no free lunch’.
Be that at it may be, the protests look like they might become an international affair. Canadian CTV television said that the protesters in New York have supported the protestors in Toronto. Local protesters are demanding changes to the financial system and raising taxes on the mega-corporations. Who knows… maybe these protests will be the beginning of a long-awaited “American Spring?”
3 October 2011
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2011/10/03/58067844.html
Editor’s Note:
Note well the rightwing rant reported by VOR. This is what the rightwing blogosphere is like… they’re vicious and nasty bullies, but they can’t “take” even a smidgen of what they hand out. They have BILLIONS for bombs… BILLIONS for non-taxpaying corporations… and BILLIONS for the most lightly-taxed oligarchs in the developed world. They have NOTHING for healthcare… NOTHING for UIBs… NOTHING for schools. They are believers in “might makes right”. They believe in smashing their boot-heel full-force into the faces of the prostrate. The blood and gore on their shoes bothers them not at all. They GLORY in it… it means that they’re TOUGH… it means that they’re PRAGMATIC. After all, “The race goes to the swiftest”. If you vote for the Republican Party, THAT’S what you vote for, full stop. If you support Rick Perry… you support cudgelling the poor (McJobs to subsidise McMansions… yahoo!). If you support Rush Limbaugh… you support immorality (he’s a pill popper, a coward who refused to serve, and four-times married)… if you supported George W Bush you supported a liar (there were no WMDs).
Here’s the cherry on top of it all… most of these rightwing barbarians claim to be CHRISTIANS. I’ll not go into that here (it deserves its own post). It’s not true… they’re not Christians… Our Lord Christ said, “Not all those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ will win the Kingdom of Heaven”. I rest my case… for now.
BMD
