What else is in the third basket from Uncle Sam?

The Russian Foreign Ministry report on human rights in the United States, along with other crimes, recorded numerous cases of police abuse. In January 2009, the American edition of the Emergency Medicine Journal published the results of a survey of doctors in emergency rooms. The study involved 315 doctors, and almost all the respondents (98%) reported that they had at least once in their career seen patients who had been victims of police abuse.

According to the NGO, «Amnesty International», in the period from 2001 to February 2012, at least 500 people in the U.S. died from police use of stun guns during arrest or during detention. In 2011, after being stopped by California police for a traffic violation, 43-year-old A. Kephart died. An autopsy revealed that he was struck by stun gun 16 times, yet none of the three officers was punished.

Various offenses of a sexual nature (sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape, etc.) are regular. According to data available in the public domain, in 2010 alone 618 police officers were convicted for this type of conduct, while in 180 of these cases minors were the targets of the violence. Human rights activists say that the level of sexual crime among American police is much higher than in the U.S. population as a whole.

Claims of excessive force by police have been received from members of the movement «Occupy Wall Street» which acts against social inequality. In October 2011, in Oakland, California, police fractured the skull of 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran S. Olsen, leaving him without the power of speech for some time. In November 2011, the Seattle police used tear gas against a crowd of protesters, including 84-year-old activist D.Reyni, a priest and a 19-year-old pregnant woman. In January 2012, in Oakland 400 people were arrested on charges of vandalism and failure to disperse, and, according to the detainees they were not given the opportunity to voluntarily obey the authorities.

Camps participating in the «Occupy Wall Street» movement were forcibly eradicated in New York, Boston, Denver, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington and other U.S. cities.

The systematic violations of human rights in United States prisons have come to be mass practice. America remains the country with the largest number of prisoners in the world (2.2 million people, or every 99th member of the adult population); more than 60% of American prisoners are members of racial and ethnic minorities. The number of persons sentenced to life imprisonment is steadily growing- in 2008 alone it was 140.6 thousand, of which 6.8 thousand were teenagers. In some states, one in 20 prisoners is held in extreme isolation – in solitary confinement. Many prisons do not meet even the minimum standards of detention. Regular and massive numbers of prisoners (up to 2 million victims for the period from 2003 to the present day.) are being harassed by prison staff, including sexual assault.

In the U.S., the exploitation of prison labor is a thriving «business». One in 10 prisoners in this country is held in a commercial prison. In 2010, two private prison corporations made around $ 3 billion in profit. According to human rights activists, as well as those serving time in U.S. prisons, private prisons in most cases do not provide even the minimum standards for a detention facility. Approximately 60 thousand people in the United States are held in solitary confinement for long periods. 20 thousand are kept alone in single cells on a regular basis. For example, in Arizona, according to the «Amnesty International» report, over 2.9 thousand people are kept in extreme isolation, (1) or one in 20 prisoners, including minors. This situation, according to numerous accounts, often leads to serious mental disorders.

Human rights activists are particularly concerned about the situation of juvenile offenders in the US. Currently, about seven thousand of them are sentenced to life imprisonment, with 2.5 thousand of these without the right to pardon. In some states, judges are required to sentence teens to life imprisonment if they have committed certain crimes (not necessarily including murder), without taking into account any mitigating circumstances.

In April 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prison administrations are justified in striping naked all newly arrived detainees and subjecting them to a body search, regardless of the severity of the crime committed. American prison authorities sometimes force strip search people detained for minor offenses such as driving with no lights or defective exhaust muffler.

In 33 U.S. states the death penalty is still permitted. There are 3.1 thousand prisoners, 62 of which are women, awaiting the execution of the death sentence handed down to them. From 1976 to 2005, 22 minors were executed in the United States. According to American defenders, from 5 to 10% of those sentenced to capital punishment in the United States suffer from serious mental disorders. In cases of capital punishment, signs of racial discrimination are evident. Capital punishment is implemented in 5 ways – hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber, and lethal injection (95% of executions) which, contrary to the assurances of the authorities, leads to suffering for those sentenced. In March 2011, Ohio became the first state in which the death sentence was carried out using a substance that has previously been used by veterinarians for animal euthanasia. This year alone Texas enforced 12 death sentences and already plan another 3 in November. (2)

Hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. are abused, resulting in some cases in death (in 2010 – 1.6 thousand). Corporal punishment is allowed by law in 19 states, and up to 7.5% of students in the U.S. are subject to this. There are learning centers where children have been «treated» with electric shocks, deprived of food and forced to inhale ammonia. The USA is one of the three countries in the world that have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is still an acute problem of violence against children adopted from Russia.

Social and economic rights are seriously disrupted in the US. The country has 12.8 million unemployed, 40 million people lack health insurance, and 14.5% of families are experiencing food shortages. The system of protection of workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively in the US is one of the weakest in the developed world. Over the past 10 years, the U.S. has not ratified any of the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO). At the same time in the country, the practice of lobbying by various interest groups working in the favor of big business is widespread, which, according to experts of the IDS in New York, is, in fact, a form of legalized corruption.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality. Of the 34 states in which the international organization conducts research, it puts America ahead of only Turkey, Mexico and Chile.

According to the statistical analysis of Sentier Research, in 2008-2010, white Americans made up 64% of the population but received 76% of total income, while the share of African-Americans and Hispanics, are respectively 13% and 16% of the population, and received 8% and 9% of revenue. According to the Pew Research Centre, the welfare of African Americans has fallen by 53% during the recession. In 2009, the average African-American family capital was 5.6 thousand dollars.

The life of Native Americans, which make up 1.7% of the U.S. population (5.2 million people) can be described as very unstable, especially for those who are still living on reservations (about 700 thousand). Almost a third of them have incomes below the official poverty line and unemployment on reservations is 50%, and in some cases (for example, «Rosebud»), more than 80%. The annual income of an Indian family, in general, is half the income of the ordinary American. A place called Allen in South Dakota (96.4% of the population are Indians), according to official data, is the poorest in the country, with the average annual per capita income being just over 1.5 thousand dollars, and with 96% of the population living below the poverty line .

One of the most disenfranchised segments of the population of America are migrants, who make up at least half of all those employed in the agricultural sector. Labor rights are violated not only for illegal immigrants, but also those of foreigners working in the country legally. As noted by NGO Southern Poverty Law Center, in order to participate in the federal program of labor migration on the H-2A visa, foreign workers usually pay their «recruiters» huge contributions and as a result fall into debt. Coming to the U.S., they have no right to change employer, who arrange their visa, even if they become the target of exploitation. At the same time, they cannot leave the country until they collect enough money to pay their debt.

According to a report released in 2011, by the organization “No More Deaths» entitled «Culture of cruelty»(3), by their actions, U.S. border guards increase the risk of death to illegal migrants, by deliberately driving them into particularly dangerous and difficult areas. During detention illegal migrants, including children, are often denied water, food and medical care, and 10% of detainees are physically abused. Workers also complain of unsanitary and extremely cramped conditions in detention, confiscation of personal items, including documents, psychological pressure and deliberate separation of families.

* * *

This brief review shows that the issue of human rights, facing all of humanity, is acutely relevant for modern America. All claims of the United States to be the moral leader in this area will require a lot of preparatory work to rid Americans of their own «Augean stables». Otherwise, whoever receives the recipes in this respect from Washington, will always say, «Physician, heal thyself!»

(1) http://www.mnestvusa.org/researchreports/cruel-isolation-amnestv-international-s-concerns-about-conditions-in-arizona-maximum-securitv-prison?page=show
(2) http://www.ap.org/
(3) http://www.nomoredeaths.org/Abuse-Report-Culture-of-Cruelty/View-categorv.html
 

“Well, then, officer, who are they … they look a little older than how I remember them to be”. 

The policeman would likely agree. 

“Who, then, is their leader? 

“Buggered if I know – all the boys in the wardroom are asking these questions”

“But”, Rip would ask, “are drugs involved?” “Do you see signs of violence?” “How do they get food and shelter”? 

Puzzled by the shrug of the policeman’s shoulders Rip decides the world has gone mad and tucks in for another 20 year snooze. 

I spoke at the Occupation in Vancouver and due to a screw-up in scheduling (Occupy is not big on discipline) I had time to watch what was happening for quite awhile and I was just as perplexed as Rip was.

Speeches were given by people who, despite saying at the outset said they weren’t leaders, started to get consensuses on various issues involved, such as food and shelter. Although one sit-in died of an overdose, but drugs, didn’t seem to be any worse than in any other large number of young people.

In my short speech I said “if you who will travel hundreds of KMs to protest would cross the street to vote you might accomplish something”.

There have been, over the centuries, disaffected people who have protested, often violently, yet they always had an issue for which there was a solution. 

The French and Russian Revolutions come to mind as being similar to the Occupy Movement, if that it can be called, as being an expressions of widespread disaffection with no leadership (originally) with this distinction – they were bloody and arose when the “Establishments” were corrupt and ready to be toppled whereupon leaders appeared.

There are three big elections on the horizon, namely the French, Germen and American – and possibly in the UK – the question is what impact, if any, the Occupations will have?

That sort of question is usually answered by the presence of an appropriate political party whose importance can be determined by the ubiquitous polls that clutter the minds of voters. Occupy is not an identifiable unit. 

There have been popular voter moments of note in the past; the Dixicrats (opposing civil rights for Blacks), in the US in 1948, the Poujardists in the fifties in France (against taxes); the Oswald Mosely led Blackshirts in prewar Britain; neo Nazis in Germany and Austria of recent times, to name a few. 

The distinction between these movements and Occupy is that they had clearly distinguishable party platforms and recognizable and usually charismatic leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Adolph Hitler to draw voters to their platform. While they may have appealed to fringe minorities all have or had a mantra and someone to sing it. 

In parliamentary democracies based on proportional representation there is a much better chance for a minority to get into the legislature. For those in a Westminster style of governance with a first past the post voting system, it’s impossible. Because I’m not as familiar with the German and French systems, I’ll confine my thoughts from here on to what I sense will be happening in the United States– a synthesis of both systems – in 2012. 

The US system makes it especially hard even for intelligent pundits (an oxymoron?) to make sense of political campaigns. US politics is especially mysterious because of the innumerable streams of political interests clashing in the three timetables that run in the system – the presidential term is four years, the House of Representatives two years and the Senate four. 

This means that there are three elections unless your state is also having its election in which case there are four. I mention all this because to this a political prognosis in an electoral system of many complications, such as the fact that cross voting, as for example for a Republican Congressman and a Democratic President is by no means rare..

Now, having made my apologies for getting it wrong – as all pundits do – let’s look more closely at the US election as it unfolds.

This foundation must be laid – there is a huge disconnect between those governing and those on the receiving end.

This in itself is not unusual – what is different is that the “establishment” has seen the middle class greatly diminish creating a sort of drifting class of those who are no longer part of their former class yet unwilling to move down to the designation of “have-nots”. 

They have, I think, become ex officio Occupiers with no desire to be so designated but along with the Occupiers, provide a great potential election pool. 

This is no problem in a tactical sense to the Republicans whose power base is the well off, the wannabe upper class and southern whites. Their problem is the rightwing Tea Party which, with no regard to what actually happened, blames the Democrats for the Recession and wants their party, the Republicans, to fix the problem by cutting taxes to the under taxed rich.

For President Obama to be re-elected he needs more than traditional Democrats to capture enough of the Big States such as California, New York, Michigan, and Florida to win. And, these states happen to be where the Occupy “lack of movement” lives and must be wooed. Remember, the president is elected by an Electoral College based not on popular votes but state votes – to use a golf term, its match play, not medal. 

Can he do it? 

If he stays on message – Iraq and Afghanistan were the fault of the Republicans as was the rise of the gluttony of the Wall Street bonus grabbers; if he pledges improved social spending and improve Medicare. He hits Occupy’s issues. 

Here’s is the main point of it all – I believe that the “young left” will get out and vote because they see with their own eyes what an impact they had as a “non movement”.

I suspect this is so in other countries, but the USA with its direct source of power in the presidency and only with only two main candidates, makes voting a tasty temptation, not an irrelevant act for the better off. 

“Occupy” will give President Obama a second term.

* * *

US Senator John McCain was quick to address Russian premier V. Putin on the occasion with a tweet saying: “Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you”. “In terms of signaling, we've stood up, as we have elsewhere in the world, and continue to stand for the right for people to peacefully express their views and their democratic aspirations. We're going to continue to do so”¹, stated US State Department spokesman Mark Toner who also mentioned that hundreds of people in Russia including blogosphere's anti-corruption icon A. Navalny remained under arrest in Russia in connection with the protest. US Secretary of State H. Clinton contributed to the debate by unveiling the US Administration's plan to additionally spend some $9m with the stated goal of supporting democracy in Russia. In a stark contrast, neither of the above seems to worry about the thousands of people held in custody in the US over the Occupy Wall Street protests, which is a theme I intend to revisit below.

* * *

Similarities between the organizational aspects of the protests in Russia and of those that earlier shattered the Arab world were momentarily pinpointed by watchers in a number of influential media. Russia's Expert magazine, for example, featured a comment stressing that the same network marketing strategies as in Egypt, Syria, etc. had been employed to convene the recent rallies in Russia². Conducting his own express survey, my colleague Alexander Rogers found over 2.1 million links to calls for public protest on Russia's Yandex search engine in the morning of December 7, in many cases with entries recurring on hundreds of web pages within a fraction of a second. It therefore became absolutely clear that the job had been done by a team of professionals with serious planning, coordination, and financial resources. The widespread suggestion that Russian protesters wear white ribbons evokes similarities with the cases of Ukraine and Libya where, accordingly, the ribbons used to be orange and green.

* * *

It is symbolic that this time the white color is offered as the symbol of a color revolution. The idea hardly originated within Russia, though the authorship is unconvincingly claimed by IMHO VI chair Arsen Revazov who wrote on Facebook: “When (and if) millions of people in Moscow start wearing white ribbons on their sleeves, attach them to their purses, or put them on their cars, falsifications would become impossible as the situation would be completely lucid. It will snow, and the city will turn white. There will be ten per cent, then thirty, then fifty or seventy. Already at thirty per cent, all fear is going to dwindle. A white revolution, snowy and clean – that is poetic. The campaign should last till March, and then we will see. I believe that if millions of Muscovites wear the ribbons – or even white napkins – things will surely change the right way without any violence”.

Whoever chose the white color for the purpose either was a bad student who failed to absorb anything from Russia's history, classic literature and lore or never went to a Russian school in the first place. The evil Snow Queen in Andersen's fairy tale was defeated, imaginative crook Ostap Bender that dreamed to dress in white in Ilf's and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf ended badly, and the anti-Bolshevist White Movement was routed (despite the West's support, by the way). The unlucky choice of white therefore seems to have been made in the West – in line with the entrenched tradition.

A revival of the White Movement in Russia is out of question, nor is there a pro-Western figure in the country to stake a viable bid for the Russian throne. As for a non-violent revolution under the “then we will see” slogan – the idea sounds utterly naïve even for a bunch of anarchists. Still, since Russia faces the threat to come under external control if the campaign successfully unravels, there must be some kind of logic behind the calls.

* * *

Russian premier V. Putin said when chairing a meeting of the Russian Popular Front's Coordinating Council: "I looked at the first reaction of our American partners. The first thing that the secretary of state did was giving her opinion about elections, she said they were unfair and unjust, even before she got ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) monitors' materials. She set the tone for some of the activists inside our country, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work with support from US State Department”. He added: “If people act within the framework of the law, they must be given the right to express their opinion, and we must not restrict anyone in exercising these civic rights. However, if someone breaks the law, the authorities and the law enforcement agencies must urge compliance with the law by all legal means”.

Actually, the reaction could combine perfectly with an asymmetric response which the US Administration would have been unprepared to face. Russia could pledge at the nearest summit or other high-profile international forum tens of millions of dollars to support democracy in the US, in particular to help the Occupy Wall Street activists. The strengths of the approach are self-evident. First, Moscow would establish by making the pledge that supporting democracy in the US counts among Russia's domestic affairs. Secondly, the official status of the initiative would block any US counter-measures like freezing the Russian accounts in foreign banks from which money would be poured into the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The above initiative could switch the international community's attention to a new sphere of the Russia-US relations where both countries would automatically act as equal players. In the settings, the political standoff would not be dominated by the outdated legacy in the relations between Moscow and Washington or any entrenched political stereotypes.

In any case, Russia should not give in to the West's rather predictable provocations or get drawn into a new information war in which it would – as it routinely happened in the past – have to play by the opponent's rules. The moment is opportune for Moscow to overturn the paradigm, to refresh Russia's elites, and to update its policies with an eye to today's challenges.

These days, Russia's history is inching towards a new bifurcation point. It is completely untrue that the country is locked in a per-revolutionary situation – simply the time has come to chart a course for the future. With the countdown running, Russia needs unconventional approaches to move ahead of the curve and to coerce its opponents into playing a game in which they at least have no advantages over Moscow. The whole world is watching Russia.

According to some cynics, these protesters are little more than a bunch of hippies, vagrants, entitled students, and liberal malcontents. There is little doubt that these people are part of OWS. Such critics, however, need to be reminded that everyone has a democratic right to assembly and protest. Moreover, what is striking about these occupiers is how ordinary they are. Rafael Cruz, a fifty-year old unemployed welder, and 23 year-old Boston College graduate John Armstrong, are among the 100+ tent occupiers in McPherson Square, Washington D.C. Jason Counts, a computer systems analyst, protests in St. Louis, Missouri. Elizabeth Lindquist, a small business owner, protests in Raleigh, North Carolina. At Occupy D.C., I have seen the employed and unemployed, students and graduates, homeowners and homeless, political activists and journalists, and others drawn to the cause. Public workers, teachers, unionists, state politicians, the unemployed, students, and supporters have all participated in the Occupy Raleigh action in North Carolina.

This social discontent has been fueled by some alarming economic and political developments over the last few decades. The most important concern is increasing social inequality in American society. Twenty-five years ago, the top 12 percent controlled 33 percent of the nation’s wealth; now the top 1 percent control 40 percent. This growing inequality is largely due to unfair tax policies, especially lowering tax rates in capital gains. The plutocrats, together with the financial industry and its political cronies, have manipulated the financial system in order to produce the sort of existing inequality that is wonderful for its beneficiaries. The wealthy argue this is the capitalist system at work; financiers and investors rationalize greater enrichment because of the high risks involved; while politicians say they need donations in order to get re-elected.

Such self-seeking greed does not satisfy many ordinary Americans who are not only frustrated at these increasing gaps but also the failure to do anything about them. Since 2008, corporations have not re-invested so that joblessness continues. Republicans refuse to support new employment initiatives and stall legislation. Meanwhile, banks who received tax payer bail-outs and rewarded themselves with fat bonuses have failed to reinvest in ordinary people. Tax fairly so the rich don’t pay less than their employees; increase employment opportunities; stop mortgage foreclosures; end US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, invest the peace dividend in future generations. In short, OWS want policies shifted away from the 1% to the 99%. Some of the signs at these occupations say it much better than I: “We Are the 99 Percent,” “How Did the Cat Get So Fat?” “Create Jobs, Reform Wall Street, Tax the Wealthy More,” “The People are too Big to Fail.” And my personal favorite: “I Will Believe Corporations are People When Georgia Executes One,” a dual reference to a recent right-wing US Supreme Court decision that corporations are individuals and the execution of Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis in the face of reasonable doubt about his conviction.

One of the most remarkable features of OWS is its location. In the last decade, we have been told that political mobilization has shifted from the street to the home, especially through privatized technology (TV political debates, computer list serves, electronic news dissemination etc.) But since mid-September, OWS has claimed public space in town and city parks, on statehouse lawns, and through urban streets. Moreover, many of these actions have wrought some impressive local organization. The Occupy D.C. encampment has transformed McPherson Square from a lunch time office-workers spot/night time homeless refuge into an alternative urban area of tent spaces, renamed pathways (Ghandi Avenue, MLK Avenue), library, garden, people’s kitchen, and two newspapers—all under the supervision of 17 local committees. The smartest thing about these actions is their occupation of public space as not only a democratic right but also as a collective expression of staying put unlike the usual marches and speeches that last a day or two and then are over. In other words, occupiers encourage emulation and are harder to dismiss. Perhaps this is the most powerful lesson in protest tactics from the tent city in Puerta Del Sol in Madrid and more famously Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Where is OWS heading? It is unlikely to fade away anytime soon, partly because of the seriousness of the economic crisis facing many Americans, but also because these occupiers are being empowered by their visibility. This is what participation in protests often does: it teaches people that collectively they can make change. It is also doubtful that OWS will be co-opted by the political and economic establishment. It is precisely the current political system that is largely being indicted for sleeping with corporate interests. Indeed, there must be some serious concern in the US corridors of political power that, unlike the links between the Tea Party and the Republicans, no such coalition of the willing exists between the Democrats and OWS. On the other hand, OWS faces some challenging days and weeks ahead. All movements ebb and flow and the winter cometh. But the biggest threat is that urban authorities will turn off utilities and shut down occupied public spaces in the name of sanitation, safety, and public access. Removals have already occurred in Atlanta, Oakland, and elsewhere. What OWS should be doing is to expand its public occupations further, conduct sit-ins at strategically important places, and build connections with institutions like labor, faith-based groups, local progressive organizations etc. It should also reach out to occupiers beyond national borders.

The historical significance of OWS is hard to determine because we are still within its orbit, but there are already some clear tendencies. First, what is taking place is a clear shift from the energy of the Tea Party to the galvanizing effect of the OWS in US politics. What this means for next year’s presidential political season is as yet unclear; but we should recall that many commentators initially seriously under-estimated the Tea Party. (Perhaps hard bargaining will pull enough Democrats to the Left.) Second, OWS is not an isolated action in US history. Protests against corporate power stretch back to the late nineteenth century. They strike a deep resonance within a culture of upward mobility because corporate power has often been identified with efforts to restrict common opportunities. The fairness with which many Americans traditionally view their society is being undermined by these unjust practices. Third, and most importantly, OWS is posing some basic questions about the legitimacy of the existing political and economic system… It is unlikely that this signals the beginning of a revolutionary transformation dreamed of by utopian leftists. On the other hand, when citizens begin to challenge the authenticity of the system, then the next issue becomes what are the alternatives to that which is propagating social iniquities? This is the first step toward a major shift from business as usual. As Shakespeare once wrote, big things have small beginnings.

This article draws from various electronic and printed sources including: theactivist.org, ALJAZEERA.NET, commondreams.org, Dissent Magazine, The Guardian (UK), The Hilltop, International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Morning Star (UK), The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post

An outbreak of protests is expected in France, where new protest campaigns began on October 31 ahead of G-20.  The summit will be held on November 3-4 in Cannes and now the city, which is famous for its international film festival, is preparing for full-size combat activities …

It is generally accepted that the history of the anti-globalization movement began in December 1999, when first properly organized campaigns against the new global financial order were held during the WTO summit in Seattle. In January 2001, the World Social Forum was held in the Brazilian city of Porto-Alegre which gathered more than 11,000 delegates from 122 countries and laid down the foundations of the anti-globalization movement. Since then the scale of the campaigns have been growing. The recent mass riots in London, has shown that anarchists, nationalists, leader of ethnic groups, members of criminal gangs also gather under the banners of the anti-globalization movement. The current global financial crisis has added “Occupy Wall Street” slogan to a wide assortment of tools used by anti-globalists. This slogan is understood and accepted by common people in the US and Europe, who suffered from social-economic unrest. The main slogans are usual: fighting unfair “new world order”, unlimited power of transcontinental corporations and financial institutions.

The growing influence of anti-globalists as a channel of expression of public discontent is directly linked with the global crisis. Everything is developing almost exactly as it was predicted in early 2009 in the report by the US’ National Intelligence Council. Predicting fragmentation and deformation of the global order into regional and other blocs in the coming 15-20 years, the authors of the report promised the coming of slowdown in economic development and globalization, less efficient steps aimed at the settlement of international issues, such as climate change and energy efficiency, as well as potential growth of political instability.

Some experts draw the main dividing line in the global community between the US and Europe. A well-known American political analyst Robert Kagan claims that "in Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view". [2]

The remarks of the American experts are partially right but they don’t reflect the true picture on the whole. The matter is, that it was the US and its close allies, which in the last ten years were bringing nearer “the collapse of the world order” boosting anti-globalization movement. At the threshold of the centuries NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, invasion of Afghanistan by the US and their allies and finally the aggression against Iraq switched the stresses in the global politics and gave birth to the opposition in different social classes.

In 2003, at the world economic forum in Davos, then US Secretary of State Colin Powell openly proclaimed the main principle of the US policy: the sovereign right to use military force in time and place where the US finds it relevant. [3]. The opinion poll conducted by the Time magazine showed that 80% of respondents in Europe see the US as the main peace-breaker. Even in neighboring Canada more than 36% of respondents said the US was the source of the strongest threat to peace. For reference – 21% named Al Qaeda, 17% – Iraq, 14% – North Korea. In 2003, a week before the forum in Davos, the Davos Sociological Service conducted its own survey, which revealed that absolute majority of respondents trusted only the heads of non-governmental organizations. In descending order they were followed by the UN officials, representatives of religious organizations, and only then leaders of West European countries and heads of business corporations. The US government happened to be at the bottom of the list [4].  Since then the protests sentiments in the world have been growing.

The anti-globalism movement has not only “American” but also “European” roots. The European community is getting more and more tired of the existing political models with same political parties (slightly differ from each other) changing each other in power. All this is topped by the EU machine which is incapable of preventing conflicts and financial-economic crises, while regularly pumping billions of euros from tax payers’ pockets.

Such a fortress of the “new world order” as NATO does not look much better. On October 27, NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen confirmed that his organization would continue to achieve its goals by using hard force, and the issues linked with the use of force will prevail on the agenda of NATO’s summit in Chicago in May 2012 [5].

Thus, NATO plans to continue the list of military operations it opened in the early 1990-s in Yugoslavia. It is in Yugoslavia where the foundations of systematic undermining of the international law and the spread of fake information were laid.  

Speaking at the presentation of the historical project “Srebrenica” in Belgrade, Edward Herman, an American expert and co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of the study on the role of propaganda model in mass media said that the massacre in Srebrenica had become the propaganda trick which enabled the US and its allies in NATO to demonize Serbs and to pave the way to humanitarian interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and in future – in other countries. Inevitably, stronger protests under anti-globalization and anti-Americanism slogans will be response to this.

_____________________________________

[1] AFP  280720 GMT OCT 11

[2] The Washington Post Weekly, 10.02.2003

[3] The New York Times, 27.01.2003

[4] The Financial Times, 15.01.2003

[5] http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_79949.htm

– Glenn Greenwald

While Glenn Greenwald's encapsulation of the ethos behind the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is incomplete — it makes no mention of protesters' concerns regarding the developing climate crisis, e.g. — it is more than sufficient to explain the movement's breadth and staying power. Long years of personal experience and a gradually developing acquaintance with critical analysis of the US system have persuaded an unmistakeable majority of the country of the corruption of the system in the interests of a narrow elite. Unmistakeably, OWS perceives both political parties as part of the problem. In this sense, it is much more radical than the Tea Party, which has remained attached to the Republican Party. Whereas the Tea Party seeks to reshape America through the existing channels of the Republican Party and the political system in Washington and at local levels, OWS is borne out of disgust and despair at the whole system. Important questions arise once we frame OWS in this way. Will OWS grow? Will the Democratic Party co-opt or splinter it? Will it change the face of American politics, by ushering in a multi-party system, or will something more sinister emerge?

Having survived for more than a month now, the main OWS encampment in lower Manhattan has put down roots that will survive any forced or voluntary dispersal of the protesters. Protest encampments, gatherings, or marches have sprung up in over 100 cities, and the number of active participants has been rising. Occupy Wall Street movement has readied masses of Americans for a rethinking of the country's economic and ecological priorities, and the movement has acquired a self-sustaining momentum. 

The momentum behind OWS is all the stronger on account of the unceasing drumbeat of news confirming the grip of the plutocracy on the country. Just in the few weeks since OWS began, headlines have informed Americans that median income is in long-term decline, having sunk by 7.1 percent from 1999 to 2010; outstanding student loan debt has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever; hunger affects 50 million citizens three or four days per week, cash-strapped cities are considering decriminalizing domestic violence; the four largest oil companies booked $546 billion in profits from 2005 to 2010, while reducing their US workforce by 11,200; big business is angling to paralyze regulations so as to foist the cost of pollution, injuries, and other externalities onto the population at large, by imposing a new cost-benefits analysis assessment on all commercial and industrial regulations (the fact that money spent on regulations brings society an average return of 7 to 1 in accidents and injuries avoided is of little interest to corporations); banks, communications providers, and other companies are compelling customers to sign away their rights to litigate disputes in court, in favor of industry-arranged arbitration processes; large banks have been exposed for stealing $2 billion or more from pension funds through mispricing of foreign exchange transactions. 

“Let's give a big tax break to the biggest tax cheats”

– Matt Taibbi, characterizing the proposed “tax holiday” for corporations repatriating profits from overseas.

Meanwhile, recent political news has been even more disconcerting than the economic news. For instance, the White House is supporting a plan to exonerate the large banks from fraud and related claims in connection with the housing bubble and mortgage-backed securities over the last decade, in return for a paltry $20 billion penalty fee. The administration has been pressuring State Attorneys General to accept this universal settlement, and it remains to be seen how many (if any) will withstand the pressure and reserve the right to pursue justice through the courts. The universal settlement would shield the banks from penalties that could reach apocalyptic size, and so is properly characterized as yet another enormous bailout plan. Next, Congress is now considering a “tax holiday” regarding the hordes of profits US multinationals are keeping offshore. The stated justification of the tax holiday (which would allow repatriation of the profits at a 5.25 percent tax rate, in place of the statutory 35 percent, is to stimulate investment inside the US. Apart from the obvious fact that US corporations are sitting on unprecedented piles of cash inside the US (i.e., they are not investing inside the US), researchers have concluded that an analogous tax holiday in 2004 led to a net loss of jobs, as many as 600,000. In 2007, then-Senator Obama actually co-sponsored the Stop Tax haven Abuse Act, but now-President Obama has not uttered any objection to proposals for a new tax holiday.

“It is way worse than NAFTA”

–Matt McKinnon, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, on the US-South Korea trade agreement.

In short, the present looks scarier to informed Americans now than it did just one month ago. And other headlines are darkening perceptions of our future. Thus, even though 86 percent of American express deep reservations about free trade, just last week the White House and the Republicans, with minimal Democratic support, passed three bi-lateral free trade agreements that honest appraisers estimate will expand US trade deficits and cost as much as 160,000 US jobs over the next seven years. Still more discouraging, the agreements deliberately open the door to abuses of labor and tax havens (in Panama). The agreement with Colombia exempts exports from there from compliance with International Labor Organization standards, and implicitly sanctions an establishment that has overseen the murder of 2,800-4,000 union organizers in the last decade or so. The agreement with Korea, for its part, permits Korean exporters to source components from North Korea, thereby openly sanctioning egregious abuses of labor. 

While Congressmen are busily protecting large corporate interests, they are also busy safeguarding their own nests, by Gerrymandering congressional districts in the aftermath of the 2010 census. If the past is any guide, incumbents will even more difficult to dislodge once the districts are redrawn. Still worse, business lobbyists have for the first time infected the redistricting process. Some states, it is true, have implemented safeguards against self-serving Gerrymandering. But the sense that the system has ossified and closed its doors to outsiders is inescapable.

As we have outlined in other pieces for this forum, the social consequences of burgeoning inequality and the drawn out recession are ominous. New data identify a lost generation of youth now taking shape. The employment rate among 16-29-year olds has sunk to 55 percent, its lowest level since WWII, and the marriage rate for those 25-34 has hit a new low of 44 percent. Naturally, hopelessness among youth is fuel for social protest movements. What is especially encouraging about OWS is the movement's adamant commitment to non-violent forms of direct civic activism. Civic activism is certainly on the rise in the US, testimony to the force of the pro-union demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin this winter even more than to OWS. The marquee protest is the ongoing demonstration of environmentalists around the White House, urging President Obama to veto the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Houston. But plenty of other actions are afoot – including a series of citizen lawsuits against the Obama administration's decision to relax proposed air quality standards, e.g.  – and the intensity of popular activism is unmistakeable. 

“We know electoral politics is a farce.”

– Chris Hedges, regarding OWS.

Given the relentlessness of the corporate takeover of American politics and the economy, opportunities for local public activism are almost ubiquitous. The OWS movement stands to grow deeper and spread wider through the medium of this activism, as citizens mobilize to keep advertising out of public schools, tighten pollution and safety controls, resist the privatization of public assets, etc. And, given the demonstrated unwillingness of the Obama administration and the upper leadership of the Democratic Party to protect the interests of the mass of the population, we can expect to see the OWS movement avoid co-optation into that party. Indeed, the movement looks very likely to remain completely aloof from the formal political system. As Chris Hedges put it in a piece that is the closest thing OWS has to a manifesto, 

We are not pleading with the Congress for electoral reform. We know electoral politics is a farce. We have found another way to be heard and exercise power. We have no faith in the political system or the two major political parties…. We know that to survive this protest we will have to build non-hierarchical communal systems that care for everyone.

OWS is liable to disdain formal alliance with established trade unions as well, tainted as they are by decades of deference to corporate power. No one currently knows what direct forms of action OWS may take, but many plausible lines are open. The movement might, for instance, amplify the call associated with former Manchester United great Eric Cantona, for retail investors to withdraw their deposits from major banks and keep their money in credit unions. Indeed, the first shots in this specific battle seem to have been fired this past weekend. Additionally, OWS may begin advocating specific forms of self-government, such as a co-operative movement modeled on recent experience in British Columbia.

No matter what degree of success OWS may have in elaborating new forms of politics, the chronic dysfunction in Washington, DC will continue to undermine Americans' allegiance to the formal political system. Perhaps a better politics will emerge out of an expanding OWS movement, and national policy will gradually navigate along the healthy social democratic trajectory northwestern Europe has traced… This is not inconceivable. But historical experience provides very different, sobering outcomes for societies experiencing rapid disillusionment with representative democracy. For instance, as Peter Fritzsche argued is Germans into Nazis, the combination of the German people's experience with self-organization during the First World War and the dysfunction of parliamentary politics in the Weimar period contributed strongly to the disintegration of moderate political movements and the ascendance of the Nazis and the Communists. We do not foresee a duel between extremist parties of the right and the left coming over the American horizon. Still less are we are predicting any rerun of the Third Reich in the US. But, notwithstanding the remarkable progress of the OWS movement, the prospects for an escalation of authoritarianism in the country are in fact very good. And the rest of the world has many reasons to fear this outcome, including military aggression and the derailing of measures to coordinate responses to climate change.

As the tide of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations sweeps across European cities, the impression is growing that the future holds a lot of unexpected for the EU.The protests which are carefully coordinated via social media can't but evoke memories of the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, especially since the coordinators readily cite parallels between the gatherings in Tahrir Square and Times Square. However, much more is at stake in Europe than elsewhere considering that the rotation of the European ruling elites made imminent by the economic crisis can translate into profound political transformations in the entire West…

On October 23, Switzerland will hold watershed elections, which are expected to turn into a triumph for the far-right Swiss People's Party. Its projected score – over 30% – is unprecedented for the European right, and Swiss watchers stress that the strong show may destroy the long-standing and essentially consensus-based balance of power among Switzerland's leading political forces. At the moment surveys give the Swiss socialists under 20% of the vote, enabling Swiss People's Party chair Toni Brunner to generously offer putting together a coalition government. The surging popularity of the far-right in Switzerland mirrors wider European trends, and the agenda spelled out by the Swiss People's Party including staples like the ban on mosque construction, automatic deportation of immigrants with criminal records, and calls for stronger Swiss identity represents the Europeans' natural response to the mounting problems confronting them. As of today, immigrants account for 22.9% of the population of Switzerland, and the key demand pressed by Brunner and his supporters is that Geneva should subject to an immediate revision its free travel agreement with the EU and otherwise cap immigration. The Swiss People's Party plans to get Switzerland to hold a nationwide referendum on immigration which it hopes will reinforce arguments in favor of a drastic anti-immigration reform.

The EU went a long and difficult way to pen the Lisbon Treaty but the anticipated benefits such as confident economic growth, financial stability, or at least common European defense and foreign-policy space failed to materialize before the economic crisis started raging in Europe and the battles over democracy for Muslims in its proximity sent flows of refugees to the EU. As a result, the feasibility of the European unification project is being increasingly called into question, one of the consequences being that prospects appear dire for those of the European elites which staked their political careers on Eurointegration.

The defeat of A. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union in the March elections in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, where the CDU stayed at the helm for 58 years, and the success of the green opposition could be interpreted as an early warning that serious changes were brewing in Europe. In November, the financially embarrassed Spain will hold snap elections which, in the wake of the recent mass strikes, can easily propel opposition to power in the country. The May local and regional elections in Spain already left the ruling socialists largely unseated. The government overhaul is an accomplished fact in Slovakia, the last of the EU countries to OK the bail-out plan known as the enhanced European Stability Facility.

Europe will face an electoral crash test in 2012-2013 when elections will be held in France, Germany, and Italy. In all cases, the opposition parties will build their campaigns around a predictable set of themes including the old elites' inability to foresee the crisis or take timely measures to handle it, the collapse of multiculturalism and the erosion of the European identity, and, on top of the above, the lack of a coherent policy in dealing with Europe's neighbors from Libya and the Balkans to Russia and Ukraine. The problems could perhaps be tolerated if taken separately but bundled they add up to a serious case for a political facelift in Europe.

In the late 1990ies, Z. Brzezinski wrote that upon absorbing most of East and Central Europe the formally integrated EU may inadvertently evolve into a conglomerate of quarreling nation-states. Judging by the bitter disputes between Paris and Rome over North African refugees or the angry exchanges between Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania whose grievances are evidently rooted in history and involve distinctly nationalist components, Brzezinski's forecast should be credited with perfect accuracy. Interestingly, these days conflicts of comparable intensity – involving the more active of the population strata and incited via the pervasive social media – are playing out within individual countries. Alarming tendencies like pitiable voter turnout, untamed radicalism, and Euro-skeptics' outstanding gains surfaced in 2009 during the European parliament elections. The subsequent national elections, especially in Scandinavian countries, underscored the rise of radicalism in Europe.

Not long ago the financial system of Europe which barely recovered from widespread and ocasionally violent protests suffered a new shock. Oddly enough, this time rating agencies were not the trouble-makers: the shock was induced by A. Merkel's statement made ahead of the October 23 EU bail-out summit. In a clear attempt to cool hightened expectations of potential aid recipients, Merkel refered to them as dreams that may never come true. A major market slide – beginning in Asia, then spreading to Europe – followed shortly.

Merkel says the search for solutions to the crisis problem will continue into the next year, but chances are that by the time the mission will be taken over by new governments not burdened with the obligations to which their predecessors used to subscribe.

“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007.

Yeah, I know, I'm always using this quote (I first used it four years ago) but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so apparent by what the pundits are now calling the 'Occupy The World' (OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw OTW.

Dig a little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are no challenges to capitalism, mostly it's a 'clean up your act' kinda thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on…

But we've been here before. This is what attempts at 'reforming' capitalism in the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again, that concepts like 'democracy' under capitalism, are at best, mere conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble almost anything.

And once the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty, so too the 'Good Life' had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again.

But unlike 1968, that some are comparing OTW to, socialism is barely mentioned, let alone the central motif. In 1968, politics was at the very heart of the situation. It wasn't about money but about posing a real alternative to capitalism. The concept of belonging to a class still existed in the public's consciousness, even if it lacked the collective will to do anything about it.

Am I being altogether too cruel to OTW? It is after all, early days in the development of OTW. It might all fizzle out or if it doesn't, the political class might have to use the logical response to the MoD's quote above: suppress it. Something for which, no doubt in another (secret) report, the Whitehall Mandarins have laid out the strategy and tactics to be employed in suppressing a burgeoning (socialist?) revolution.

After all, when "[f]aced by th[o]se twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest”, says it all.

You have to take this stuff seriously! It's not a game and the state is very adept at employing whatever tactics it chooses to suppress serious dissent including the use of agents provocateurs (a long-standing 'tradition') to infiltrate and provoke pointless confrontations with the state, in order not only to justify suppression but more importantly, as part of a propaganda war waged through the media, where we have no counter-voice.

Repression of course carries its own risks and far from being a solution could only further excerbate the problem. Timing is all. This is not a game. The political class is fighting for its life and that of its masters, the corporations. That's why they write those reports. Just as with the insurrections earlier this year in the UK, the state had a clear response to it and the role of the media was central to its effectiveness in spreading the state's message.

Let it 'burn baby, burn' and turn the world's cameras onto the conflagration, followed by a good dose of Victorian 'rough justice' (pity they've abolished hard labour and deportation to Australia). Make an example of them should anyone else have ideas about following in their footsteps.

The key here is the observation made by the Whitehall Mandarins about "class interests". Now if well-paid and no doubt loyal members of the political class' intelligentsia have gotten it figured out (and so far, their prediction is right on the money), how come the 'Left' hasn't?

Currently class is something almost entirely absent from the OTW movement. Without it eventually taking centre stage, OTW is bound to be stillborn. But there are some positive signs that some kind of 'consensus' mechanism is emerging from the chaos akin to some kind of 'self-organizing' principle. After all, we have what the MoD report called "access to knowledge, resources and skills" necessary to produce workable alternatives not only to capitalism but to fashion a new kind of inclusive democracy, one that hasn't existed before.

The aim is to create a venue for democratic deliberation and open debate in a place normally associated with secretive privilege. People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which [to] work on solutions ourselves. — 'Talk Amongst Yourselves' By Dan Hind.

It's not a 'peasants revolt' kinda thing, though of course inevitably those hit the worst by the crisis will revolt first. But the crisis of capital has now hit those who make up the very bedrock of capitalist society's justification for existing, its so-called middle classes. These are the major consumers in our economy, not only is their consumption a major chunk of our GDP (as well its debt), they are also the managers and technicians of capitalism and the state machine. Piss them off and things could get out of hand just as the MoD has predicted.

Some on the Left in the UK are still calling for revitalizing the Labour Party as a potential force for socialism but if so, then it means that it would have to come from its decimated grassroots membership, a tall if not impossible order to carry out. At the first signs of revolt in the Labour Party's constituency membership, the Party Machine will intervene and purge its ranks just as it has done so many times in the past.

For a Left largely pinning its hopes on a working class that no longer exists, it will have to broaden and deepen its knowledge of how capitalism has evolved and transformed the nature of the working class and learn to seek connections to a much more diverse alliance of forces if we are to defeat the Empire.

What an irony that the Left — led largely by middle class intellectuals — fails to see what has happened, trapped as it is in its own patronizing and nostalgic vision of the working class aka George 'middle class' Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier'. And this is the problem: it's always middle class intellectuals on the Left who have set the agenda, not for their own 'class' mind but for an idea that emerged in the middle of the 19th century; that the organized industrial working class would undertake the Revolution, led of course by middle class intellectuals.

OTW is nevertheless a transcendent moment, one to cherish and sustain and no doubt just the first shot across the bows of Global Capital but for it to have a chance of success it will have challenge corporate capitalism's right to exist.

To do this we will first have to dispel the 'bad apple' theory as the cause of the current crisis. That it's just a question of regulating capitalism, smoothing out the rough edges, eliminating the extremes and above all, restoring 'competition', so-called real capitalism.

But this could only be done by breaking up the giant corporations and abolishing the financial sector in its entirety as it currently exists. Is it likely that advocates of 'real' capitalism aka Max Keisser could undertake such a mission? The way I understand it, a 'real' capitalist economy would consist only of small competing private businesses, cooperatives, public utilities and the self-employed, and one assumes massive state intervention in order to make it all happen.

Sounds a bit like my favourite kind of socialism, William Morris's version and not an overly ambitious objective given the political will to carry it out.

But who will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the military-industrial-media complex? Only a state owned and managed by the working class can undertake such a momentous task. OTY OTW…