We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Crushing Occupy Wall Street: It Was All About the Pitchforks

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

Whereas Martens places the emphasis on the fear that Occupy movement instilled in our ruling class, I'd like to emphasize their response which expresses the willingness of capitalist elites to use overt force to defend their system in spite of all the "democratic" facades they have placed around it. When their system is threatened, they have no compunctions about showing where real power lies in a country ruled by capitalist elites. As revealed in the article, a brutal response which ignored all constitutionally guaranteed rights to protest was put in place by a close collaboration of ruling class agents and their police forces to crush dissent. Thus has revealed the naked hand of fascism which capitalist elites always ultimately rely on whenever they feel threatened.

The same phenomenon is now being played out in the regime established by Empire operators in Ukraine for us to see in a more overt fashion as revealed in a report by Clara Weiss at WSWS entitled "Kiev deploys fascists against political opponents". Empire agents used self-proclaimed fascists from the very start of their violent overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine.

Of course, the same pattern played out for all the world to see in Germany in the 1930s when German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen and other industrialists brought the Nazi party to power when they were feeling threatened by communists and socialists.