Soraya Chemaly: Women Own 1% of the World's Property. It must be what they're wearing. 1% One Percent.
O.N.E. P.E.R.C.E.N.T. How Wall Street Occupied America. This article is adapted from a speech Bill Moyers gave in October at Public Citizen’s fortieth-anniversary gala.
During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890, populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed, “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. " She should see us now. That’s now the norm, and they get away with it. Let’s name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse, the further perversion of democracy. Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is filled with people is no mystery. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood says that our nation discovered its greatness “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and pecuniary pursuits of happiness.”
Those words moved me when I read them. They chose swiftly. Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it. (CNN) -- Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos.
They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence. Consider how CNN anchor Erin Burnett, covered the goings on at Zuccotti Park downtown, where the protesters are encamped, in a segment called "Seriously?! " "What are they protesting? " she asked, "nobody seems to know. " Like Jay Leno testing random mall patrons on American History, the main objective seemed to be to prove that the protesters didn't, for example, know that the U.S. government has been reimbursed for the bank bailouts.
Are they ready to articulate exactly what that problem is and how to address it? Occupy Reality - Transcript. People have been asking for a transcript of the little speech I gave at Occupy Wall Street on Wenesday November 9.
It amounts to a one-page summary of my book Life Inc. (In other words, if you wonder how any of this could be true, read the book for the full story and documentation. I won't argue it out here.) My name is Douglas RushkoffI am humbled and honored to be amplified by your voices. You are not fighting against people, but against a machine.It was put in place over 500 years ago.By a wealthy elite - trying to repress a booming peer to peer economy.Those people are all dead, but their program lives on. They invented an operating system called central currency. David Korten: Why I'm in Solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet. By the calendar it’s autumn, but for many it is the beginning of the American Spring. posted Oct 04, 2011 Protesters fill the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, the day more than 700 were arrested.
At this moment the brave and dedicated #OccupyWallStreet protesters are in the streets of New York and cities around the world. They call the world’s attention to Wall Street greed and corruption as a common source of the many crises that threaten the human future—economic, political, social, and environmental. This is a defining moment for America. Contrary to the Wall Street propaganda, Wall Street is a job killer, not a job creator. America is far from broke. Wall Street cloaks itself in the American flag to gain public favor, but offshores its profits to avoid paying its share of America’s upkeep—leaving it to the “little people” to pay for the public infrastructure on which Wall Street profits depend. David Korten is board chair of YES! Interested? Why many back Occupy Wall Street.
Citigroup is lucky that Moammar Gadhafi was killed when he was.
The Libyan leader's death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers - securities that it knew were likely to go bust - and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities - that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust. It doesn't get any more immoral than this. "The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation," The Journal added. "As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.
" Panic of the Plutocrats.