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This is all repost folks. The article from alter.net is long, but clearly written and provides a great deal of context as to what OWS is and what it needs to do to continue its success. Do you want to actually understand some of what OWS? is about? Make the time and read this article. Take it away Dr.Chomsky.
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It’s a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way, something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the groundwork. It would have been the fulfillment of a dream for him to be here with you.
The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it’s spectacular. It’s unprecedented; there’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead — because victories don’t come quickly– this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.
The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era — not just this moment — but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development — even in dark and hope — there was a pretty constant expectation that it’s going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.
I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s, although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that we’re going to get out of it, even among unemployed people. It’ll get better. There was a militant labor movement organizing, CIO was organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we’re going to get out of it.
It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense of hopeless, or, I think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American history and it has an objective basis. In the 1930s unemployed “working people” could anticipate realistically that the jobs are going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today — and the unemployment level in manufacturing today is approximately like the Depression — if current tendencies persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come back. The change took place in the ’70s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying reasons, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Bernard, who has done a lot of work on it, is a falling rate of profit. That, with other factors, led to major changes in the economy — a reversal of the 700 years of progress towards industrialization and development. We turned to a process of deindustrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued, but overseas (it’s very profitable, but no good for the workforce). Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise, producing things people need, to financial manipulation. Financialization of the economy really took off at that time.
Before the ’70s, banks were banks. They did what banks are supposed to do in a capitalist economy: take unused funds, like, say, your bank account, and transfer them to some potentially useful purpose, like buying a home or sending your kid to college. There were no financial crises. It was a period of enormous growth; the largest period of growth in American history, or maybe in economic history. It was sustained growth in the ’50s and ’60s and it was egalitarian. So the lowest percentile did as well as the highest percentile. A lot of people moved into reasonable lifestyles — what’s called here “middle class” (working class is what it’s called in other countries).
It was real. The ’60s accelerated it. The activism of the ’60s, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent. They’re not changing. The ’70s came along and suddenly there’s sharp change to industrialization and the offshoring of production. The shifting to financial institutions, which grew enormously. Also in the ’50s and ’60s there was the development of what became several decades later the high-tech economy. Computers, Internet, the IT revolution was mostly developed in the ’50 and the ’60s, and substantially in the state sector. It took a couple of decades before it took off, but it was developed then.
The 1970s set off a kind of a vicious cycle that led to a concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector, which doesn’t benefit the economy. Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power, which, in turn, arrives to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The physical policies such as tax changes, rules of corporate governance, deregulation were essentially bipartisan. Alongside of this began a very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives the political parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporate sector.
A couple years later started a different process. The parties dissolved, essentially. It used to be if you were a person in Congress and hoped for a position of committee chair or a position of responsibility, you got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, you started to have to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector and increasingly the financial sector–a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the literally top 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, for the general population it began an open period of pretty much stagnation, or decline for the majority. People got by through pretty artificial means — like borrowing, so a lot of debt. Longer working hours for many. There was a period of stagnation and a higher concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There’s always been a gap between public policy and the public will, but it just grew kind of astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.
Take a look at what’s happening right now. The big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on is the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not much of an issue. The issue is joblessness, not a deficit. Now there’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, if you want to pay attention to it, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls and the public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply during this stagnation period, this period of decline. The public wants higher taxes on the wealthy and to preserve the limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. Either they’ll reach an agreement, which will be the opposite of what the public wants, or else it will go into kind of an automatic procedure which is going to have those effects. Actually that’s something that’s going to happen very quickly. The deficit commission is going to come up with its decision in a couple of weeks. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger in the heart of the country, and having negative effects.
Without going on with details, what’s being played out for the last 30 years is actually a kind of a nightmare that was anticipated by the classical economists. If you take an Adam Smith, and bother to read Wealth of Nations, you see that he considered the possibility that the merchants and manufacturers in England might decide to do their business abroad, invest abroad and import from abroad. He said they would profit but England would be harmed. He went on to say that the merchants and manufacturers would prefer to operate in their own country, what’s sometimes called a “home bias.” So, as if by an invisible hand, England would be saved the ravage of what’s called “neoliberal globalization.”
That’s a pretty hard passage to miss. In his classic Wealth of Nations, that’s the only occurrence of the phrase “invisible hand.” Maybe England would be saved from neoliberal globalization by an invisible hand. The other great classical economist David Ricardo recognized the same thing and hoped it wouldn’t happen. Kind of a sentimental hope. It didn’t happen for a long time, but it’s happening now. Over the last 30 years that’s exactly what’s underway. For the general population — the 99 percent in the imagery of the Occupy movement –it’s really harsh and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1 percent, or furthermore 1/10th of 1 percent, it’s just fine. They’re at the top, richer and more powerful than ever in controlling the political system and disregarding the public, and if it can continue, then sure why not? This is just what Smith and Ricardo warned about.
You would think that contraception would be a fairly straightforward issue. Women need reproductive autonomy and choice when planning their family. Of course, once the religious get involved things rapidly go down hill. Articles like the following should not have to be written…
“PRCH (Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health) supports the recent recommendation of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to include contraception in the preventive health benefits [1] for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) [2] and the decision of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adopt this recommendation in its draft regulations. [3] As physicians, we know that access to contraception is essential to the health and well-being of our patients.
About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended. [4] Regular use of contraception prevents unintended pregnancy and reduces the need for abortion. [5] Contraception also allows women to determine the timing and spacing of pregnancies, protecting their health and improving the well-being of their children. [6] Contraceptive use saves money by avoiding the costs of unintended pregnancy and by making pregnancies healthier, saving millions in health care expenses. [7] Several contraceptives also have non-contraceptive health benefits, such as decreasing the risk of certain cancers and treating debilitating menstrual problems.[8] Making contraception more affordable is a significant step forward for the health of women and their families.”
There is nothing in the above that is particularly controversial. It should be a slam dunk as most 1st world countries already do this.
“PRCH appreciates the decision of HHS to include in the draft regulations the coverage of all forms of birth control,[9] allowing patients to access to the method that best meets their needs. Contraceptive methods vary and women with their health care providers need to be free to select from the full range of FDA-approved contraceptives. Not all contraceptives are clinically appropriate for every woman. [10] We also know that women and couples are more likely to use contraception successfully when they are given their contraceptive method of choice, be it a birth control pill, a vaginal ring, or an intrauterine device (IUD).[11] The draft regulations hold the promise of making contraception more affordable and easier to access for millions of women.
While we strongly support the inclusion of contraception as preventive care, we are deeply troubled by the provisions that exempt certain employers from compliance. The draft regulations threaten to compromise the very important protections they would put in place.”
Again the social-conservative legislative agenda throws women under the bus. It is reprehensible for this sort of legislation to be happening in a developed nation.
Betting on infinity is a tough choice to justify. Pascal tried and failed… will you?
Occupy the Living Room Chair, coming to a comfy seat near you!
Angel, Speedy, and Vishnu:Snuggle Time!
It is always funny to watch people try to argue against evolution without actually knowing what evolution is. Constructing straw men to beat down, making appeals to ignorance and arguments from incredulity seem to be the game plan for most arguments of the religious against well established scientific fact. The Living Dinosaur makes a great video rebutting a creationist claim that complex biochemical pathways could not have possibly evolved over time. Making such a claim requires a fairly good understanding of biology and evolution, do you think the creationists did their homework so as to make a defensible legitimate claim? Watch LD and find out.
The long winter in Canada and the United States is going to challenge the OWS movement. Living in a tent sucks at the best of times, but add snow and cold temperatures to the mix and the proposition becomes quite untenable (at least to my delicate tastes). I hope that the organizers of the OWS have planned for the elements, perhaps moving the focus south during the winter and then coming back in force in the north during the spring. Whatever their plans may be, I hope no one is injured due to exposure to the elements.
The weather aside, another feature playing prominently into the future of the OWS movement is its apparent resilience to the corrosive effects of the right wing media. Quite simply, it would seem the OWS seem to have resisted so for being tarred and feathered by its main ideological opponents.
“Hardline conservatives struggle to find a candidate to go up against Barack Obama in 2012. Sarah Palin gets booed in public. Tea Party numbers are dwindling and now the group is ranking amongst the least popular groups in the country. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street has surged forward both in public consciousness and in popularity. The right-wing response to Occupy Wall St. has been limp and incoherent, mainly centered around spreading urban legends about dirty hippies and avoiding any substantive engagement.
How did the right-wing lose hold of the narrative? Here are four reasons it has been unsuccessful (so far) in steering and reframing the discourse surrounding OWS and the movement’s focus on the injustice of the 1%’s dominance of our economy and politics.”
The focus away from the mostly incoherent babble from the Tea Party is a good thing. The sheer amount of stupidity amalgamated into one movement was dangerous for the political discourse of the US, polarizing even further the divide between people.
1. Its “woe is me” pose may have lost luster in an ongoing economic crisis.
“The stock and trade of the American right is to play the victim. Right-wing propaganda in the form of Fox News, talk radio and direct mail is full of whining about how conservatives are just so oppressed because they can’t impose their agenda on others by fiat. The Tea Party’s motto was one of victimization: “I want my country back!” At first, many perceived the Tea Party as a populist uprising against unpopular initiatives like the bank bailout. As time has worn on, however, it’s become clear that the Tea Party has no real interest in holding corporations accountable, and that its leadership generally seemed interested in exploiting the bank bailout as part of a larger anti-government ideology coupled with a heartfelt devotion to the typical culture warrior nonsense.”
The persecution experience of the majority plays out on many levels. Encountering this juxtaposition while arguing with people is most distressing as it shows the extreme inversion of values that has taken place that have mostly swept reasonable debate away.
2. The obsession with sex.
“The Republicans swept many state elections and the U.S. House by convincing the voters that they intended to do something about the economic crisis and lower the unemployment rate. Instead, they devoted most of their attention to the supposed crisis of people having unauthorized orgasms. The House can’t pass a jobs bill to save their lives, but they can pass one bill after another attacking abortion rights or defunding family planning spending. The first big showdown between Obama and the House Republicans, in fact, was over condoms and the pill; House Republicans threatened to shut down the federal government in order to prevent American women from getting subsidized birth control pills from Planned Parenthood. On the state level, voters saw the newly elected Republicans do the same thing. One state after another is falling into disrepair and seeing unemployment numbers stay high, but their state legislatures are more interested in defunding contraception and restricting abortion than in paying attention to people’s economic concerns.”
I though “the plan” for Republicans was to promise social conservative reform to get elected, and then once elected deliver right of centre economic policy while ignoring their social promises. It would seem rather than following the plan they’ve actually dug their heels in and decided to make the social agenda a sticking point. Apparently no one has told them that the items they are supporting are regressive anti-woman measures that seemed designed to take the US back to the Dark Ages.
3. The looniness.
“Between the Tea Party and the electoral sweeps, the right seemed to decide that it was popular enough that it could let it all hang out without getting any blowback. The American right has always been loony and paranoid, but 2011 was when the looniness really came out and became unavoidable. There were Glenn Beck’s paranoid rantings. So many right wingers became loudly fixated on President Obama’s birth story that he was eventually forced to release his birth certificate. Republican presidential candidates find they must pay tribute to all sorts of irrational nonsense, from denying global warming to creationism, in order just to get their foot in the door. Average Americans have come to expect that we’ll be hearing about communist mind control chemicals in the drinking water soon. It’s hard to see the Tea Party as rational actors who can make solid economic decisions when they spend so much time emailing each other with lists of reasons they think President Obama was born in Kenya.”
Not much to add here, other than to highlight the sad commitment to delusional nonsense.
4. The out-of-sync ideological preoccupations.
“Beyond the obviously loony right-wing nonsense is the inability to set aside unpopular preoccupations. The right assumed the electoral sweeps meant the country was ready to hear ideas the far right has been nursing for a long time in the underground. Right-wingers talked bank bailouts until they got into power and then switched to talking about permanently eliminating major taxes on the super-wealthy, ending Social Security and privatizing popular government services–all ideas that don’t sit well with the public at large. On the contrary, in economic hard times, Americans hang on harder to social welfare programs like Social Security, and they stop thinking it’s so great that rich people have more money than they know what to do with while people are starving in the streets.
Because of these ideological preoccupations and wealth-worshipping, the American right was wholly unequipped to deal with the rise of liberal protests in the form of Occupy Wall Street and We Are the 99 Percent. The protesters have addressed record unemployment, the foreclosure crisis and growing inequalities between the wealthy and the rest of us; hence the reference to the 1 percent of Americans who control 40 percent of our nation’s wealth. The right couldn’t even grasp the actual complaints of the protesters and instead responded with We Are the 53 Percent, a reference to the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income tax. The problem with that is no one was talking about most federal income tax payers; the liberal protesters are defending the vast majority of Americans, a group that includes people currently paying federal income tax, and those who can’t because they’re poor or students or retired.
The whole point of Occupy Wall Street is that a middle-class person who struggles to get by has more in common with an unemployed person than with the rich; in fact, a middle-class person could easily become a poor person in this economy. That is untrue of the 1 percent. The utter inability to grasp that basic argument has exposed the American right for what it is: a group of intellectually bereft people whose reliance on empty ideological platitudes prevents them from engaging with a changing world.”
UsneakydevilU gets the Fail Award for Lack of Argumentative Prowess.
I’ve highlighted the author’s assertion because it seems many discussions get sidetracked when it comes to discussing what the OWS protests are about. More importantly though, what I find most disturbing about debating with many people who self identify as holding right wing opinion is the lack of commitment to grounding there presuppositions in fact. Consider the response garnered from my last attempt at discussing educational issues with a religious conservative blogger. After thoroughly dissecting and refuting his arguments the responses offered in return were sadly bereft of any substantive counter arguments.
Nothing.
No content, no assertions, just assorted whinging about tone and how angry atheists are and how not having a skydaddy is bad for me. Admittedly, the format chosen by me was very critical (what else can you be when confronted with nuclear grade stupidity?) but not insulting to the person in question, just their argumentation. How do you grow as a person if you cannot interact reasonably with ideas that conflict with your own? The alter.net article struck a chord with me as it seemed to mirror my experiences while debating a ‘conservative’ from the US.
I think winter has finally arrived for me. Listening to the radio, they were talking about -16 degree windchill and snow at the International Airport. Today, I may have to put the shorts away. Although I am not ready to concede to closed toe footwear yet.
In light of such momentous weather news, let’s start the cold out right with a little Vivaldi.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…