President Obama Is Behind The OWS Crackdowns!!!

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

• Naomi Wolf
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 12.25 EST
• Article history  Source Here

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

  The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.

No 2:reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton [blogger's note: And Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, at the time], that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

The Walmart Syndrome

Here is a piece I wrote on 11-30-09, which is totally relevant today.




America is being sold out. The blue light special is not just for that coffee maker, 31” big screen HDTV, $7.00 slow cooker, or washed out denim jacket, but its ultimate purpose is to sell you out! Your wages will be placed on the shelf of CheapMart and sold off to the lowest bidder. The corporate elite want you to continue to buy their Chinese made cheaply made $10.00 wet/dry vacuums, or $20.00 power drill sets so they can bring down YOUR wages so you, too, can make those cheapie things, which would in return force your wages down to the bottom, even though you have an $800 plus home mortgage, $300 per month health care premium bill, along with your car payment, which you got for 0 down, 0 interest but $300 a month payment for 6 very long years. And then, there is YOUR credit card interest payment, if you still have a credit card and have credit—period—look at your interest payment. I won’t even go into your weekly grocery bill.

As you continue to over-buy your holiday gifts, you are bringing down your wages, your standard-of-living, and pumping your cash into the central bank of China boosting their enormous budget surplus, while your kids and grandkids will have to work-for-less in order to pay off the US budget deficit. Happy Holidays, Mr. and Ms. Consumer.

Keep feeding what it is you and your kids nag you to buy, instead of learning how to live with less.

The Teabaggers have been so busy resisting a government health care protection plan that would help cover them after their personal home drops into foreclosure and their lives fall into bankruptcy that they have forgotten to take their meds, which would control, or suppress their pervasive Walmart Syndrome that has infected their brains.

The Walmart Syndrome is a parasite that infects the brain, whereby knowledge and understanding becomes significantly impaired. It entered the United States virtually undetected by the CDC—Center for Disease Control, but has begun to affect many brains over the last 10 years. It turns the gray matter into fatty deposits, whereby the brain is unable to process sensible information because nerve pathways disappear and fail to allow for what is called an action potential---the ability for the nerve impulse to move down the nerve pathways for a functional and purposeful action.

What has happened is that U.S. corporations decided to shut down domestic operations, resulting in outsourcing, and the relocation of jobs over to China, and other low paying, and punitive-worker countries. In China, the U.S. corporations (we gullibly thought they were U.S. corporations) found new friends in China, which they embraced as investors. They called these new relationships multi-national US/Chinese corporations.

The U.S. corporation benefits from the generous legal system, which protects their patents, and copyrights, foreign national product dumping violations, as well as the generous tax system allowing write-offs, write-downs, deductions, and loopholes, as they abandon the American worker and U.S. economy for more lucrative returns.

China, a booming industrialized country, has pegged its currency to the dollar so their exports can sell in U.S. stores, such as Walmart, cheaper than domestically made products, what is left of them. Even though the Renminbi, (China’s currency) is artificially kept low, in spite of their booming economy and massive trade surplus, they, and their brothers-in-manufacturing-arms—U.S. multi-national corporations, like it is this way because the average working American, who is suffering greatly as a result of unemployment and underemployment because of job losses and plant closings, home foreclosures, debt payments, rising out-of-pocket health care costs, and stagnant or falling wages can buy the cheap Chinese/US corporate manufactured products.

Now, why do those hugely rich corporate ex-patriot executives love this arrangement? Well, after you and I buy the cheap Chinese stuff, those dollars head right back to China where their banks are flooded with U.S. greenbacks. What do they do with all our cash? The Chinese central banks buy U.S. Treasuries from the Federal Reserve Bank which monetizes those returned dollars to continue their zero percent lending practices to their broker dealers (mega-banks), who then use this cash to gamble at the Wall Street casino parlor increasing the stock prices of fortune 500 multi-national corporations stimulating others to join in on the scam. That means more bonuses, and higher executive salaries, as well as fattened business expense accounts. In addition, these mega-banks buy commodities manipulating the street prices, such as oil, gas, grains, etc. This enriches the corporate predator investment bank balance sheets, as well as the giving out of tens of billions of dollars in corporate bonuses. They also hand over billions in campaign contributions, through their 22,000 lobbyist brigades, to make sure that very little is done to interrupt their wealth-building machine.

Also, those Chinese central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and private equity funds jump into the Wall Street speculation and gambling game as the rich US/China industrialists and financiers push the stock prices higher and higher, in spite of the fact that the average American is slipping further and further down.

So, when the Teabaggers and others who head over to Walmart to buy some cheap stuff for the holidays, they are really rewarding those U.S. companies that sold-them-out. I guess it is like asking the neighborhood bully to come over for a free dinner, and then, inviting him to beat you up for dessert.

Now, do you feel better, yet?

P.S.—For those who need a reason to NOT spend their dollars at Walmart, here is a big one. Walmart does not screen or research the origination of their gold jewelry products. It has been stated that much of their gold product comes out of gold mines in the Congo, where women, and children are raped, abused, beaten and forced to endure horrible working conditions at gun point.

Thanks for reading, jerry