Demonstraties VS #3: Wanneer valt 'the wall'?

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Op maandag 7 november 2011 21:46 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
The War Against the Poor

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Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind

David and Charles Koch, oil tycoons with strong right-wing views and connections, look set to tighten their grip on US politics

The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons' political influence and that could prove significant in next year's presidential election.

The database will give concrete form to the vast network of alliances that David and Charles Koch have cultivated over the past 20 years on the right of US politics. The brothers, whose personal wealth has been put at $25bn each, were a major force behind the creation of the tea party movement and enjoy close ties to leading conservative politicians, financiers, business people, media figures and US supreme court judges.

The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers' advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.

In classic Koch style, the project is being conducted in great secrecy. Karl Crow, a Washington-based lawyer and Koch adviser who is leading the development, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did media representatives for Koch Industries, the brothers' global energy company based in Wichita, Kansas.

But a member of a Koch affiliate organisation who is a specialist in the political uses of new technology and who is familiar with Themis said the project was in the final preparatory stages. Asking not to be named, he said: "They are doing a lot of analysis and testing. Finally they're getting Themis off the ground."

The database will bring together information from a plethora of right-wing groups, tea party organisations and conservative-leaning thinktanks. Each one has valuable data on their membership – including personal email addresses and phone numbers, as well as more general information useful to political campaign strategists such as occupation, income bracket and so on.

By pooling the information, the hope is to create a data resource that is far more potent than the sum of its parts. Themis will in effect become an electoral roll of right-wing America, allowing the Koch brothers to further enhance their power base in a way that is sympathetic to, but wholly independent of, the Republican party.

"This will take time to fully realise, but it has the potential to become a very powerful tool in 2012 and beyond," said the new technology specialist.

Themis has been modelled in part on the scheme created by the left after the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Catalyst, a voter list that shared data on supporters of progressive groups and campaigns, was an important part of the process that saw the Democratic party pick itself off the floor and refocus its electoral energies, helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.

Josh Hendler, who until earlier this year was the Democratic National Committee's director of technology in charge of the party's voter files, believes Themis could do for the Kochs what Catalyst helped do for the Democrats.

"This increases the Koch brothers' reach. It will allow them to become even greater co-ordinators than they are already – with this resource they become a natural centre of gravity for conservatives," Hendler said.

Though Charles, 75, and his younger brother David, 71, are very rarely seen or heard in public, their political importance in the US is hard to exaggerate. They have been steadily investing their wealth in projects designed to drive the country ever more to the right – they have backed the tea parties, funded incubators of radical conservative ideology such as the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University and hosted twice-yearly gatherings of some of the richest and most powerful figures in the country.

"What makes them unique is that they are not just campaign contributors; they are a vast political network in their own right," said Mary Boyle of the watchdog group, Common Cause.

They are estimated so far to have given more than $100m to right-wing causes. Kert Davies of Greenpeace estimates that the sum includes $55m since 1997 funding climate change deniers.

Many of the causes backed by the brothers clearly chime with their own self-interests. To encourage the denial of global warming science is obviously advantageous to businessmen who have made their fortunes in drilling and piping of oil; low taxation suits billionaires wanting to cut their own tax contributions; a bonfire of state regulations over business and the environment would be beneficial to a multinational corporation like Koch Industries, which is the second largest private company in the US.

But the two men are also anti-government ideologues who believe in what they preach, an inheritance from their fiercely anti-communist father Fred, who was a founder of the radical right-wing John Birch Society. David Koch stood as vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian party in 1980 on a platform of doing away with a host of public bodies including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the CIA, social security, welfare, taxation and public schools.

Though the Kochs have already stamped their influence on the American right, their impact to date looks like small beer compared with their ambitious plans for 2012. According to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, the brothers intend to use their leverage among billionaire conservatives to pump more than $200m into the proceedings, focusing in particular on the presidential race.

Their potential to sway the electorate through the sheer scale of their spending has been greatly enhanced by Citizens United, last year's controversial ruling by the US supreme court that opened the floodgates to corporate donations in political campaigns. The ruling allows companies to throw unlimited sums to back their chosen candidates, without having to disclose their spending.

That makes 2012 the first Citizens United presidential election, and in turn offers rich pickings to the Koch brothers. They have already made clear their intentions. At their most recent billionaires' gathering in Vail, Colorado in June, Charles Koch described next year's presidential contest as "the mother of all wars". A tape of his private speech obtained by Mother Jones said the fight for the White House would be a battle "for the life or death of this country".

Exhorting the 300 guests in attendance to open their sizeable wallets and donate to the Koch election coffers, he went on: "It isn't just your money we need. We need you bringing in new partners, new people. We can't do it alone. We have to multiply ourselves."

Which is where Themis comes in. Karl Crow, the spearhead of the new database, was one of the speakers at the June 2010 Koch gathering in Aspen, Colorado, where he described his mission under the heading "Mobilising Citizens".

"Is there a chance to elect leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and prosperity," he said, adding that he wanted to put forward a "strategic plan to educate voters on the importance of economic freedom".

At the same gathering, the kernel of the idea for Themis was unveiled as a "micro-targeting" initiative that would allow a more thorough understanding of the electorate. "How can we take advantage of this advanced technology?" the agenda asked.

By dint of the secrecy surrounding the project, it is not known which bodies have signed up for the database. But it is a reasonable guess that groups that are highly influential within the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, as well as right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, will be among the participants. Between them, they have tentacles that extend to millions of voters.

Lee Fang, a blogger at the Center for American Progress, thinks the combination of the Kochs' capital and their new voter files could have an immense impact in 2012. "This will be the first major election where most of the data and the organising will be done outside the party nexus. The Kochs have the potential to outspend and out-perform the Republican party and even the successful Republican candidate."

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Cops Step Up Efforts Against Occupy Wall Street, Intimidate CP Reporter, Others For Videotaping

Already working to deal with certain security issues, the Occupy Wall Street camp is now grappling with another problem—police crackdowns.

Late last week, activists saw a whirlwind of police activity against the protests in New York City, including a handful of arrests and several instances of police interfering with video recordings.

On Thursday afternoon, undercover police officers confiscated a gas generator owned by the Occupy Wall Street movement from one of the park’s nearby street vendors. Activists had worked out a deal with the sympathetic vendor; the Occupy camp would supply gas, and the vendor got to use the generator so long as he let occupiers run power cords to essential areas of the site, like the medical and media stations.

Plainclothes officers seized the generator, which protesters claim was an illegal seizure of personal property; the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which has worked to represent the rights of some occupiers, has asked police to return other generators seized the previous week, saying the officers gave no legal justification for the confiscation. The vendor was issued two tickets for “failure to provide a permit for the storage of gasoline and failure to have a permit to change out propane tanks.”

Legal issues aside, the officers involved in the confiscation clearly had issues with being filmed, as captured in the unedited video I took below. Highlights include an officer giving a likely-false badge number and threatening one videographer with arrest if he touches a door, a pair of officers aggressively chasing me and others down the block for filming and chanting, and another officer grabbing the wrist of a videographer while he tries to back away

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THE CALL FOR DEMOCRACY 2.0

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the past, information, decisions and opinions could not be transmitted within seconds accross a country, much less the entire world. As a consequence, citizens elected regional representatives to serve as the voice of the people in parliament.

Such a representative system, reflecting the economies and the societal structures of a world long gone, is still in place today, but no longer serving the fundamental idea and ideal of democracy as a system for the people and by the people.

Instead, the elected representatives have become compromised by lobby interest, corrupted by corporations, have lost touch with those they are supposed to represent, serving only those who want people to serve them, be it as employees, voters or soldiers sent off to wars to kill or die for profit.

We have reached a time of change as too much power is concentrated in the hands of the few, becoming a "representation" in name only.

Such is the corruption that these representatives have now repeatedly turned against those they are supposed to represent, that they are fearing the tools, the technology that would allow a more direct participation of those that they are supposed to govern: the internet.

The internet allows us all to work together in a new form of democracy, a true 21st century version it that is still true to its ideas and ideals, giving everyone a chance to have their voices heard, to participate in the shaping of ideas and laws on regional, national or even global levels.

There is no excuse for denying this chance to us, the people.

There is no excuse for not allowing us, the citizens, to be educated, to formulate informed opinions, to vote on those issues that directly affect us, not only in our daily lives but also decide the future of our children and of the very world itself.

Decisions like these can no longer allowed to be made by those who don't listen to us, who only listen to those who promise them money or power or both, who offer them consulting contracts, places on corporate boards, who have sold the voices of the people to Big Oil, to Big Pharma, to anyone "Big" enough to pay them enough to make them believe that corporations are people, and people are consumers.

These few, they fear us, the citizens. Those few, they fear our thoughts, our thoughts and opinions, as the example of the proposed referendum in Greece on the Euro has shown, aborted under pressure of not only an unelected body like the EU but also bowing to the pressure of the so-called markets, behaving more irrationally than any informed citizenship would ever be able to do

There is no reason to fear us. We are your brothers, we are your sisters, we are your fathers and mothers, your daughters and sons. We are your neighbors. And we are all in this together. That is what is at the heart of democracy. Us.

And for the first time in the history of mankind, technology has given us the tools, the chance and opportunity to live up to those ideals that were formulated ages ago, by men and women smart enough and kind enough and trusting enough to see that we are the same, by men and women who believed that this is what it's all about.

The opportunity to not only have your voice heard, but listened to.

The opportunity to educate and in turn be educated.

From the first book printed, those in power have fought the flow of free information, out of of fear, scared of no longer being able to control those they governed. In every age, the people who have fought for this freedom have been called terrorists, have been called criminals, have been oppressed.

Do not fear us.

Do not fear information.

Do not fear the necessary change.

This is our time. This is your time. This is your future.

It is the time that democracy can finally live up to the promise given to mankind all those centuries ago. A free exchange of ideas. An educated citizenship.

To those who fear the redesign of democracy. Have the past months not proven that today's system is at the point of collapse? That parliaments like those of the United States and even Germany have abandoned even the illusion of representation by appointing secret committees, deciding on budgets, budget cuts, on your life, without even being held responsible to those who are supposed to hold this power by the virtues of our constitutions?

Has it not proven that the laws that were written, the laws that were repealed, that were neutered, blocked and scrapped not only served the interested of big corporations beholden to no ideal, but were in fact written by them and voted upon by Members of Parliament who not only didn't know what they were voting on, but also didn't seem to care about the obvious incompetence?

In the United States, only 8% trust Congress anymore to represent them. In Germany, it is 9%. Similar numbers are to be found in every country that is supposedly a democracy. We have been sold out, have been silenced, have been pushed aside.

We didn't stop believing in the system.

The system stopped believing in us.

We believe there are more competent people out there. We believe that they have not been given a voice, have been silenced by a system where money talks and ideas are silenced.

These people are not only out there.

These people are you and me.

And it us who can change this world. Bit by bit.

Discussion by disccusion. Debate by debate. Decision by decision.

We know you are disillusioned. We know you are afraid. We know you are angry.

But most of all, we know this... We know you care.

We think we not only can, we need to change the way democracy works, not only for a better today, but a better tomorrow. A man, a politician, once said to us to "hope" and "change", and we hoped that he would be the change.

But he wasn't. We are this hope. We are this change.

The "Occupy" Movements around the world, they are the first voice. It is loud. It is unshaped. But it is a beginning. It voices your anger. It voices your disillusion. And it has been critized for not offering a plan, a Powerpoint presentation, a memo... by the very people who have had years and decades to come up with solutions and failed time and again.

We cannot wait on those who stand against us anymore.

We cannot wait for them to represent us anymore.

We believe in democracy. They do not.

We believe in the intelligence of our citizens. They do not.

We believe in the ideals of our constitutions. They do not.

And to change this world, to fight for a better tommorrow, we must take back our democracies from them. Technology has given us not only the tools, but also the ideas on how to tap unused potentials. Ideas that can start as a single thought and transported to millions of people at the touch of a button through technologies like BitTorrent, thoughts that can spread through 140 characters or less on Twitter, plans that can be worked on in open and fair exchanges on Public Pads.

The ideas are out there. The ideals are out there.

Because you are out there. And waiting to be listened to.

We are calling on all of you.

The dreamers. The realists. The experts. The people.

Because that is how democracy starts

With just a single sentence. A single thought.

"We, the people..."

It was important enough to begin every call for democracy since the American Revolution.

We are all in this together.

Let's start the debate.

Let us create a democracy that is transparent, that is again for the people and this time by the people, representing the best of us and no longer represented by the worst of us.

Let us build a democracy that deserves this name. That evolves. That is ours to shape and guided by the principles that our leaders have forgotten but that we still carry in our hearts.

Let us build Democracy 2.0.

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Op donderdag 10 november 2011 10:50 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

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How the rich rig the system

From low capital gains taxes to stock buy-backs, here are the ways the elites ensure the markets benefit them

A growing number of Americans suspect that the American economic system is rigged in favor of the rich and merely affluent. That growing number of Americans is right.

Here are three of the many ways that markets for compensation are rigged to benefit not only the top 1 percent but also the top 10 percent, a group that includes many well-paid professionals:

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Riot police break up "Occupy Cal" protest


(CBS/AP)

BERKELEY, Calif. - Police in riot gear moved Wednesday night to break up a demonstration at the University of California at Berkeley that started when anti-Wall Street protesters tried to establish an encampment on campus.

Television news footage from outside the university's main administration building at 10 p.m. showed officers pulling people off the steps and nudging others with batons as the crowd chanted, "We are the 99 percent!" and "Stop Beating Students!"

The university reported earlier in the evening that an administrator had told the protesters they could stay around the clock for a week, but only if they didn't pitch tents, use stoves or other items that would suggest people were sleeping there.

The protesters voted not to comply with the demand and to go ahead with setting up a tent site they dubbed "Occupy Cal" to protest financial policies they blame for causing deep cuts in higher education spending.


Occupy protesters start march from NYC to DC
Squeezing profit out of Occupy Wall Street
VIDEO: Politics of "Occupy Wall Street"

As the evening wore on, the crowd appeared to be swelling as protesters debated whether to stay overnight. The student newspaper The Daily Californian reported that some people from the Occupy Oakland protest were joining the Berkeley demonstrators.

Earlier Wednesday, campus police assisted by Alameda County sheriff's deputies dismantled a small encampment students had set up near Sproul Hall despite official warnings that such encampments would not be allowed.

The move to create a campus off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street camps around the country came after hundreds of students, teachers and Berkeley residents rallied on campus before marching peacefully to a Bank of America branch.

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Tuberculosis Breaks Out At Occupy Atlanta’s Base

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis.

The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.

“Over the last three months were have been two persons who have resided in this facility who have been diagnosed with confirmed or suspected infectious tuberculosis (TB),” said Fulton County Services Director Matthew McKenna in a written statement to CBS Atlanta. “One of these persons was confirmed to have a strain of TB that is resistant to a single, standard medication used to treat this condition. All person(s) identified as positive have begun treatment and are being monitored to ensure that medication is taken as directed.”

The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless has indicated that two cases have been made public knowledge to the group, the first coming from someone who contracted the disease in September. The identities of the people who have contracted the disease, however, have not been disclosed by the health department to this point.

The news of the tuberculosis contractions could force Occupy Atlanta to move once again. WGCL reports that more than 100 protesters made the move to the homeless shelter Oct. 30 after Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed evicted Occupy Atlanta from Woodruff Park, citing that they were no longer allowed to camp out overnight. The homeless shelter is also facing an eviction of its own from the city.

Messages left by CBS Atlanta for Occupy Atlanta and the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless were not immediately returned.

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davec

Look at the LIES in the headline!

It did NOT break out in the Occupy movemment, it was a HOMELESS SHELTER.

What the hell i the media so scared of OWS for?

November 10, 2011 at 3:32 pm | Reply |

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The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com/

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occupy movement inspires unions to embrace bold tactics

Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help — tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation.

Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.

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Occupy Wall Street and Obama

In sum, conditions are ripe for the Occupy movement to grow and deepen into the kind of large, determined popular movement that strikes fear in the hearts of economic and political elites. If Occupy plays its cards right, it could bring about a profound, much-needed change in American society. And although Obama and his advisers might not realise it, the emergence of such a movement could also be the best thing that has happened to him as president.

[..]

Already, the political conversation has changed in the US. Although much of the media coverage of the Occupy movement has been simple-minded or even hostile, there has been a great deal of it, and the effect has been to amplify the movement's message and gain it followers. Now, budget cuts for workers and pensioners are no longer the sole focus of political debate; requiring corporations and the rich to pay their fair share of taxes is also on the agenda.

The Occupiers are adamant they will not be co-opted, by the president or anyone else. That is the right instinct. If this movement can remain an independent force, continue growing in numbers and diversity and keep the pressure on, it could cause both Republican and Democratic politicians to think twice about favouring the one per cent over the 99 per cent. And that could create the political space for Obama, like FDR before him, to champion policies that benefit the many over the few - which in turn might help save him from defeat in 2012.

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Op vrijdag 11 november 2011 12:05 schreef Homey het volgende:
Ik snap niet dat die Occupiers nog zo fan zijn van Obama.

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UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned

A debate over the use of police force has reignited at the UC Berkeley campus after videos surfaced showing officers repeatedly shoving and jabbing screaming students who tried to keep officers from dismantling a nascent Occupy encampment.

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Occupy Wall Street is winning

Whatever the objectives of protesters involved in Occupy Wall Street, they have succeeded in engaging the country in a conversation about income inequality.

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Public Opinion Snapshot: Americans Favor Action on Inequality

Occupy Wall Street has put inequality back in the national conversation. Reflecting this change, pollsters have started to ask more questions about this issue. And they are finding—surprise!—the public doesn’t like current levels of inequality and wants action to correct the situation.

In the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 76 percent agreed and 60 percent strongly agreed that “The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency. The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.”

It's working!

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Morningfile: Occupy eviction, occupy legal landscape, occupy politics and HRM Council

Halifax has survived a stormy weekend. On Remembrance Day, quiet reflection was replaced with a clash between police and protesters on the grounds of Occupy Nova Scotia. Police were enforcing an order from the Halifax mayor, to clear the tents out of Victoria Park.

But the Mayor’s decision may have actually helped the Occupy Nova Scotia morale.

Protesters are looking into legal challenges, and their numbers at rallies are swelling. Police are facing brutality accusations and increased hostility from some of the people forced out of Victoria Park.

The Mayor is stuck defending his perceived duplicity (Peter Kelly on Oct. 22: “As long as people are respectful and doing their democratic right, that’s fine. Just maintain the aesthetics of the property—it is public space. As long as you’re being respectful and abiding by the peace and not causing problems, you have the right to protest. But from time to time, as we have different events occurring, we’re just asking for a bit of cooperation as things transpire, that’s all.” Peter Kelly on Nov. 11: “At no time were they told that they could come back. If you review my commentary over the last number of days it has said that they’re not welcome back.”)

The Chronicle-Herald’s editorial board thinks all that is “hogwash,” and the protesters didn’t even deserve the extraordinary lee-way they had already enjoyed. Forty thousand dollars is already too much for free assembly to cost us. Enough is enough!

For people interested in the legal angle, I’d recommend these links:

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Thursday November 17th National Day of Action

On Thursday November 17th, the two month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we call upon the 99% to participate in a national day of direct action and celebration!

BREAKFAST: Shut Down Wall Street - 7:00 a.m.

LUNCH: Occupy The Subways - 3:00 p.m.

DINNER: Take The Square - 5:00 p.m.

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Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s Legal Advisor Resigns In Support Of Occupy Oakland

In a raid this morning, the city of Oakland used riot gear-clad police to evict the Occupy Oakland tent city. “It feels pretty sad because we built a community here, and now they can just come and destroy it,” said Lisa Bitar, one of the protesters.

Outraged by the action taken against Occupy Oakland, Dan Siegel, who had been serving as mayor Jean Quan’s legal advisor, decided to resign today. On Twitter, he wrote that he was resigning to support Occupy Oakland and oppose the 1 percent:

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Occupy-kampement in Oakland ontruimd

De politie heeft vandaag in het Californische Oakland het kampement van betogers van de Occupy-beweging ontruimd. De afgelopen dagen was het herhaaldelijk tot ongeregeldheden gekomen in of rond het kamp. De politie verklaarde het verzamelpunt vanmorgen (plaatselijke tijd) voor schoongeveegd.

Vrijdag is bij een ruzie tussen demonstranten in Oakland een man doodgeschoten. Bij het kamp waren eerder al problemen, waardoor een oorlogsveteraan in het ziekenhuis opgenomen moest worden. De demonstranten bezetten ook enige tijd de drukke haven, waardoor die 24 uur stil kwam te liggen.

Betogers tegen de macht van het grote geld en het economische systeem verzamelen zich op tal van plaatsen in de VS, in Oakland sinds ruim een maand geleden. Ze noemen dat 'Occupy' (bezetting). Oakland is een van de belangrijkste havensteden aan de Amerikaanse westkust.