An episode of Al Jazeera‘s Listening Post in which I discuss the media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Filed under Occupy Movement
October 14, 2011
by Arun Gupta
Co-founder of The Indypendent and The Occupied Wall Street Journal
Wall Street occupiers march on Columbus Day
PERHAPS THE most wondrous aspect of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement is that there are lessons for everyone. For the 99 percent, it’s that we still have agency, power and imagination. For the ruling 1 percent, you can’t throw people into despair and deprivation and not expect a social explosion. For the mainstream media, you can’t fit genuine democracy into five-second sound bites or look for anointed leaders. For the right, you can’t cheer revolts and uprisings one minute and condemn them the next.
Filed under Occupy Movement
Here is the recent interview I did with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation talking about the Wall Street protests and The Occupied Wall Street Journal.
via http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/video/marketnews-24080783/#video=26864766
Filed under Occupy Movement
By Arun Gupta
What is occurring on Wall Street right now is truly remarkable. For over 10 days, in the sanctum of the great cathedral of global capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.
They have created a unique opportunity to shift the tides of history in the tradition of other great peaceful occupations from the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s to the democratic uprisings across the Arab world and Europe today.
While the Wall Street occupation is growing, it needs an all-out commitment from everyone who cheered the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, said “We are all Wisconsin,” and stood in solidarity with the Greeks and Spaniards. This is a movement for anyone who lacks a job, housing or healthcare, or thinks they have no future.
Filed under Occupy Movement
By Arun Gupta
It upset me that my only way to comprehend the events was to reference the Hollywood imaginarium. But it was understandable. Where else would I have seen images resembling the war in my backyard – collapsing skyscrapers, gigantic fireballs and thousands of dead?
The need to make sense of the events of Sept. 11 – the plot by al-Qaeda, four hijacked airliners, the demolished twin towers and nearly 3,000 dead – is universal. It is why the state’s first task after 9/11 – before one bomb dropped, one soldier deployed – was to imprint the “war on terror” on the collective American mindset.
Filed under Economy, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized
American history is no stranger to opportunists posing as experts on fifth columnists or foreign subversives plotting to undermine our hallowed way of life.
Nearly a century before Sarah Palin, there was Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson. Months after the 1919 Seattle general strike, Hanson resigned his post, penned Americanism Versus Bolshevism, in which he warned that “the preaching and teaching of anarchy, syndicalism, sabotage and Bolshevism is being carried out throughout the nation,” and cashed in with a lucrative speaking tour.
During the McCarthy era, in addition to the infamous junior Senator from Wisconsin, there was a legion of self-styled experts on the grave threat posed by the monolithic Communist menace. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover scrutinized in Masters of Deceit the Marxist method of “divide and conquer” so as to “soften up a democracy.” In The Politician, candy manufacturer and John Birch Society founder Robert Welch labeled FDR, Truman and Eisenhower as knowing agents of the Communist conspiracy. Fred Schwartz of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, “once suggested that communists promote abortion, pornography, homosexuality, venereal disease and mass murder … as a way to weaken the moral fiber of America and pave the way for a communist takeover,” according to Political Research Associates, a group of scholars and journalists that studies the right.
Historian Richard Hofstader argued in The Paranoid Style in American Politics that panic over foreign subversion stretches back hundreds of years. In the late 18th century, Scottish scientist John Robison stoked hysteria in the fledgling United States with his tract on the Illuminati, claiming it was formed “for the express purpose of rooting out all the religious establishments and overturning all the existing government of Europe.”
This dime-store Manichean resurfaced with dismal predictability after the Sept. 11 attacks with a new class of demagogues, ones who specialize in spreading Islamophobia. While anti-Muslim hostility found root in the fertile soil of American nativism, Islamophobia has become a national pastime thanks to the funders, think tanks, fear mongers and right-wing media and politicians promoting it.
Experts play a crucial role in the network as they receive the funding to produce hyped-up reports on nonexistent threats. The reports are disseminated through the right-wing media and prominent evangelical ministers, often becoming part of the mainstream debate.
Having established a solution — that Islam, and by implication Muslims, need to be politically and socially restricted because they are a danger — Islamophobe activists search for a problem such as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” while politicians stroke the bigotry for votes.
The efforts came to fruition in 2010 with media disinformation, hate-spewing rallies and numerous attacks on mosques in the lead up to the 9/11 anniversary. Islamophobes also inspired Anders Breivik, the radical Christian extremist who confessed to slaughtering 77 people in Norway on July 22, saying he wanted to save Europe from a Muslim takeover.
FUNDERS
In its new report, Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, the Center for American Progress describes the funders as the “lifeblood” of the network. It notes, “seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009 — funding that supports the scholars and experts.”
Donors Capital Fund — Contributed more than $17 million to the Clarion Fund in 2008, which helped pay for a DVD the Clarion Fund distributed, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, to more than 28 million swing-state voters before the 2008 presidential election.
Richard Mellon Scaife foundations — Labeled the “Funding Father of the Right” by the Washington Post, Scaife is worth an estimated $1.2 billion and chairs three foundations that contributed $7.88 million to three Islamophobic groups, including the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation — The foundation that bears the deceased brothers names (both of whom were members of the John Birch Society) started bankrolling neoconservatives in the 1970s, backed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on labor unions and provided $5.37 million in funding to anti-Muslim organizations.
Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker Foundation — With a mission that includes “combating media bias against Israel and the Jewish people, Israel advocacy, and democracy defense,” this and another related foundation and trust have spread $1.14 million among seven different groups including ACT! for America.
Russell Berrie Foundation — Contributed $3.11 million to the Islamophobe network, with nearly 90 percent going to the Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation.
Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund — These two related funds have pumped $2.82 million in various organizations, including $2.32 million to the Middle East Forum.
Fairbrook Foundation — Controlled by Joyce and Aubrey Chernick, whose estimated fortune is $750 million. Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal writes, “Chernick has provided funding to groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and CAMERA, a right-wing, pro-Israel, media-watchdog outfit, to violent Israeli settlers living on Palestinian lands and figures like the pseudo-academic author Robert Spencer, who is largely responsible for popularizing conspiracy theories about the coming conquest of the West by Muslim fanatics seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate.”
MISINFORMATION EXPERTS
Frank Gaffney — A Reagan-era defense department official, Washington Times columnist and founder of the Center for Security Policy, which published Sharia: The Threat to America, and created stop911mosque.com in 2010. Gaffney accuses the Obama administration of perpetrating “official U.S. submission to Islam,” and claims conservative groups have been infiltrated by Islamists and deems Gen. David Petraeus guilty of submission to sharia.
David Yerushalmi of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE) — Counsel for the Center for Security Policy, Stop the Madrassa and Stop Islamization of America, Yerushalmi co-authored Sharia: The Threat to America, which warns the Muslim Brotherhood is “effectively imposing shariah blasphemy laws in America” by demanding “tolerance of its medieval religious practices” and “repress[ing] free speech.” Apparently one of the Brotherhood’s insidious methods meant to achieve the “seditious goals of its civilization jihad” in America is through the Muslim birth rate.
Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum — Having served on the U.S. Institute for Peace as a Bush appointee, Pipes is the dean of Islamophobes. His organizations include Campus Watch, Islamist Watch and the Legal Project. Pipes calls for increased police profiling of Muslims and Arabs, writes that 10 to 15 percent of all Muslims are Islamists and “must be considered potential killers,” and supports a public ban of the veil because it’s a “terrorist-enabling” garment.
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America — Director of the website Jihad Watch, his work and website were cited a whopping 162 times by Anders Breivik in his 1,500-page manifesto. Spencer describes himself as “a frequent Fox News contributor,” and believes Islam is the “only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”
Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism — Accused of fabricating evidence and using front groups to funnel millions of dollars to other outfits in his control, Emerson says Islam “sanctions … planned genocide as part of its religious doctrine.” Rep. Peter King has praised Emerson for his “expertise.”
POLITICAL FIGURES
Rep. Peter King
Newt Gingrich
Sarah Palin
Rep. Allen West
Rep. Michele Bachman
ECHO CHAMBER AND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Fox News
Washington Times
Rush Limbaugh
Glenn Beck
Pat Robertson
John Hagee
Ralph Reed
Franklin Graham
‘ACTIVISTS’
Pamela Geller and Stop Islamization of America — An offshoot of Stop Islamization of Europe, SIOA was formed in 2009 by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. It claims “We are now in a new phase of a 1,400-year-old jihad against the kafirs (all non-Muslims everywhere),” and the consequences of “ignorance about Islam, its doctrine and purposes … can be nothing short of national extinction.” It was behind the “Leave Islam” ad campaign that ran on buses in New York City and Miami.
Brigitte Gabriel and ACT! for America — Head of the “largest grassroots national security organization in America” and author of They Must Be Stopped (guess who “they” is), Gabriel has been described as a “radical Islamophobe” by the New York Times. She has said Arabs “have no soul” and thinks Muslims should be prevented from seeking political office. She is a regular guest on Fox News and claims to have advised Rep. Peter King in his public hearings on “Radicalization in the American Muslim Community.”
David Horowitz and the Freedom Center — A highly effective inhabitant of the Islamophobe swamp, Horowitz has said “Middle Eastern Muslims are ‘Islamic Nazis’ who ‘want to kill Jews, that’s their agenda,” and his Freedom Center has funneled $1 million to Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch since 2007. The center operates multiple outlets and projects promoting Islamophobia, including FrontPage Magazine and Jihad Watch websites, the NewsReal blog, “Islamo-Facism Awareness Week” on hundreds of college campuses, and a weekly lunch forum and yearly conference that provide a platform for notable anti-Muslim bigots.
EVENTS
Anti-Sharia Bills
In the past year, the anti-sharia movement has gathered a full head of steam in the Deep South and Southwest, which is apparently in danger of being overrun by the Taliban. Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee have passed laws banning the use of Islamic law in state courts, which is unconstitutional, while some two dozen states have seen similar legislation introduced since 2010. David Yerushalmi has been the driving force behind the anti-sharia movement in part by developing a template for state-level bills, which have been cut and pasted from his text in at least three different states.
Hearings on Muslim ‘Radicalization’
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, convened hearings in March 2011 on alleged radicalization within the Muslim-American community. He has said there are “too many mosques in this country,” 85 percent of which are “ruled by the extremists,” and “we should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them.” King also authored Vale of Tears, a fictional account of Muslim terrorist attacks on Long Island that he called “half truth.”
‘Stop the Madrassah’
A purported community coalition that opposed the Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City’s first Arabic dual-language school. Through Fox News, and New York’s right-wing media, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes and others demonized principal Debbie Almontaser as a “9/11 denier” and “jihadist,” and fomented anti-Muslim sentiment in general. Mayor Bloomberg forced Almontaser to resign in 2007, starved the school of funds and support, and announced the school’s closure in April 2011.
‘Ground Zero Mosque’
Neither a mosque nor located at Ground Zero, Park51 is planned to be an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. Pamela Geller lit the Islamophobic fires with a May 2010 post on her Atlas Shrugs blog, calling Park51 “Islamic domination and expansion … It’s a stab in the eye of America.” By the summer, regular demonstrations at Ground Zero picked up the vicious rhetoric — portraying Islam as the enemy, with all Muslims wanting to “conquer unbelievers,” with the “mega-mosque … an Al Qaeda triumph.” While protests quickly faded after the 9/11 anniversary, the center was injected into the national discourse and Republican candidates around the country continue to shrilly denounce it as a wedge issue. Meanwhile, civil liberty groups have documented an increase in mosque attacks, saying “the anti-mosque and anti-Muslim sentiment expressed in the opposition to Park51 was not an isolated incident.”
This report used numerous sources, particularly Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.
Photo credits: Richard Mellon Scaife, post-gazette.com; Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy; Rep. Michele Bachman, Flickr/gageskidmore; Rep. Peter King, peteking.house.gov.
Design credit: Mika Tarkela.
Filed under Politics
From the August 1, 2011 issue | Posted in National | Email this article
Or what about hysterical headlines like “U.S. Debt Default Looms” (courtesy of NPR) unless Democrats and Republicans agree to raise the debt ceiling? They are completely untrue. Richard Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says, if there is no agreement by Aug. 2 to allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow more funds, then “the government instead would choose among cutbacks on various expenditures such as state and local aid, medical aid, for war, for infrastructure. It would extraordinarily unusual for a government in such a situation to attack its creditors.”
HAPPY CREDITORS
If no deal on the debt ceiling is reached this sucks for the rest of us, such as the millions depending on their portion of the $23 billion in Social Security payments scheduled for Aug. 3. But the creditors will be kept happy and there will be no default because that is how government works in a capitalist economy. And even if the impasse dragged on, the feds could dip into $550 billion in reserves, including more than $400 billion in gold at current prices, to keep making debt payments.
One blatant lie is that Republicans and Democrats, the Congress and the White House are serious about reining in budget deficits to reduce the long-term debt. They are not. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the deficit from 2011 to 2013 will be $3.5 trillion. Over the next decade it will be $8.5 trillion. Now, lots of numbers are being thrown about on spending cuts over a 10-year period, but they keep dropping — the Senate Democrats are currently proposing $2.2 trillion in cuts and costs savings while the House Republicans weigh in at $915 billion.
Cutting one or two hundred billion dollars a year is meaningless. Wolff says, “Even if you cut the debt $300 billion, you are left with an enormous annual deficit that adds hugely to the national debt they all claim to care so much about. It gives lie to the idea that the Republicans and Democrats are interested in trying to cut the national debt.”
Of course, the stand-off is based on another lie: that Congress and Obama administration can enforce cuts over a 10-year period. The budget process is an annual exercise. There is no provision whatsoever to make cuts permanent because they can always be undone by Congress, and taxes can always be lowered or costly new wars started, both of which always seem to happen, widening the deficit once more.
There is no end to the falsehoods and fantasies from the chattering classes. “We are in recovery.” So says Ben Bernanke — since 2009 no less. Obama has been saying the same since 2010, while hedging that it is “painfully slow.” Really? Tell that to the 25 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or have dropped out of the labor force. This amounts to an unemployment rate of 16.2 percent, but the real rate is probably closer to 20 percent after factoring in youth unable to enter the workforce or those who have taken early retirement. Try telling the 100 million Americans who are effectively caught in poverty (using far more realistic measures than the government does) or the 6.5 million households with mortgages that are delinquent or in foreclosure that we are in recovery.
The notion we are in recovery is based on believing the downturn was “the Great Recession,” a distortion the New York Times helped spread. Paul Krugman is one of the few mainstream commentators saying that not only is there no end in sight to the four-year-long slump, let’s give it a more accurate label such as, “the Lesser Depression.” Suppose the corporate media had been saying “Depression” for the last few years. It would have bolstered support for extraordinary measures to dig out of an extraordinary crisis, such as policies that did work during the last depression: jobs programs, infrastructure, social welfare, stronger labor rights and aid to local governments. But this would mean redistribution of wealth downwards instead of upwards. Therefore, saying recession makes it sound part of the normal boom-and-bust cycle, one we will overcome through the magic of the market as we have so many times before.
HACK THE STATE
Recovery means we can move on to reducing the debt so as get our economic house in order, a big lie told by Serious People whether pundits, politicians or experts. We are being led to think the wisest course is repeating the major mistake of the Great Depression — enforcing austerity in a deep economic funk. It’s a position backed by the New York Times. Sure, the Times may sniffle that Obama’s stunning offer to hack $650 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security was “overly generous” to Republicans but that is just code for “we in the liberal penthouse support it with mild reservations.” On the other side of the media aisle, the Wall Street Journal endorsed the Republican sadism, saying that none of the critics on the right offer “anything nearly as fiscally or politically beneficial as Mr. Boehner’s plan.”
This is what passes for the range of opinion in the two-most esteemed newspapers in the country. That’s because we are still in thrall of the biggest lie of all — market fundamentalism. An eternity ago, in 2009, Newsweek declared, “We Are All Socialists Now.” They were right, but only in the way America has always been socialists: we socialize the rich when they lose money, and then we socialize their ability to profit.
Thus, the debate is about differing Democrats and Republicans visions on which parts of the welfare state should be packed off to the glue factory. “We all must sacrifice.” Never mind that the effect on the national debt will be laughably small, while the suffering will be enormous. Slashing $650 billion from entitlements — Obama’s burnt offering — will nick a miniscule 3 percent off the national debt by 2020. But we must do it to appease the markets.
THE GOD OF THE MARKET
Pleasing the markets means pleasing the credit rating agencies — Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch — an example of cult-like devotion in which the elite command us to drink the Kool-Aid. Like a death watch, the media turn anxiously to the rating agencies to ask the condition of U.S. government debt. Are they going to downgrade it, which would mean higher interest rates and an even bigger debt problem? This is another lie as Japan’s huge debt — more than twice the size of U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP — was downgraded in January and “there was no negative impact at all,” according to one analyst.
Let’s review how the big three credit rating agencies inflated the mortgage bubble. The bubble was driven by the banking industry’s insatiable appetite for debt, the repackaging of dicey mortgages into profitable securities. The agencies, especially Moody’s and S&P, gave investment-grade ratings to almost any sack of residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) that landed on their desks. By law, banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors need investment-grade ratings on these securities to hold them. Since the rating agencies were paid by the issuers, they were raking in cash by gold-plating shit. Moody’s revenue on these securities quadrupled from over $61 million in 2002 to over $260 million by 2006. For S&P, it went from $64 million to $265 million for CDOs in the same four years and from $184 million in 2002 to $561 million in 2007 for RMBSs.
Don’t think they didn’t know exactly what they were doing. At S&P, one manager emailed a co-worker in December 2006, “Let’s hope we are all retired and wealthy before this house of cards falters.” Then, according to a U.S. Senate report, the ratings firm triggered the financial collapse by downgrading huge amounts of these securities from AAA to junk. In one day, on Jan. 30, 2008, S&P downgraded an astonishing 6,300 ratings. In 18 months the two firms downgraded more securities than they had done in their entire 90-year histories. Once the securities turned to junk, the big players could no longer hold them, which burst the bubble as they were sold in a panic and losses began mounting on the bank’s balance sheets.
We know the rest of the story – the financial collapse, the trillions in bailouts and credit lines, the lack of punishment for executives at any of these firms, the return to obscene profits a year later, the de-fanging of any credible reform. But now, we are being told, the rating agencies word on debt is the word of God.
This time, S&P is not so much looking for a fast buck as nakedly pushing an agenda. On July 14, S&P issued a detailed statement, explaining that it was placing both long-term and short-term U.S. debt “on CreditWatch with negative implications.” It explained that “there is an increasing risk of a substantial policy stalemate enduring beyond any near-term agreement to raise the debt ceiling.”
S&P did offer a safe passage. If it determined that if “an agreement would be enacted and maintained throughout the decade” to realize “budget savings of $4 trillion,” then “other things unchanged” it could affirm the stellar ratings on both short- and long-term U.S. debt. But, it warned, any “credible” agreement “would require support from leaders of both political parties.”
S&P is telling Capitol Hill to drive a stake through the heart of the welfare state. To let the peasants know they must till the corporate fields until they die. Otherwise, the credit rating deities will rain downgrades upon our heads, blighting the land for future generations.
We must pay now and forever. This is the truth of the matter, a truth so crude it seems comical. Which is why we need so many lies.
December 18, 2010
The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.
The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. This was accomplished by putting labor back into competition with itself by off-shoring industrial production, through deregulation and with frontal assaults on labor rights, organizing and solidarity.
Similarly, the current attack is a two-pronged effort to reorganize state social services, either by eliminating or privatizing them, and decimate public-sector unions whose workers provide those services. While the safety net is being withered by attrition, police and spying agencies are getting more powers and funding, and the wealth of the super-rich and record corporate profits are deemed off-limits to taxation to close any government budget gap. Continue reading
Filed under Economy
I find celebrity chefs of the TV variety to be about as appealing as corn dogs and Mountain Dew. Unlike real masters, like Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Alice Waters, the Jamie Olivers and Paula Deans are far more adept at mugging and shtick than craft and artistry.
That’s why I enjoy watching them flame out like a fatty steak on a hot grill. Rachel Ray, whose culinary expertise is based on peeling open boxes and cans of processed food-like chemicals, slopping them together, and pronouncing “How cool is that?” with a psychotic-cheerleader smile blasted across her face, recently published a recipe for “Late Night Bacon”.
Yup. Apparently one of her corporate paymasters has decided that Americans who prefer the convenience of “pre-cooked” bacon need a remedial course in how to microwave bacon. Rachel has kindly obliged by posting a “recipe” on the Food Network site that explains how to put bacon between paper towels and stick it in the microwave.
The real treat is in the comments such as:
“Finally, someone has the courage to defy the Illuminati and publish the sacred “Late Night Bacon” recipe in its full, unedited glory. I only hope that Rachael lives long enough to publish the follow-up epic: Peeling an Orange.”
“Do you have any recipes for cereal? The kind in a box? I really like cereal, but it seems tricky- milk first? cereal? big spoon? little spoon?”
“I was overwhelmed! The paper towels, the arranging, the microwaving….TOO MUCH! Sticking with eating peanut butter out of the jar.”
“This is why Jews don’t eat bacon…it’s much too complicated.”
“This looks so good and easy, but I don’t have paper towels. Can I use aluminum foil instead? Please advise. UPDATE: I used Kleenex tissues with Vicks to absorb the grease and they left a funky taste on the bacon. Will the tissues with aloe vera fare better? Please advise.”
Filed under Food
Arun K. Gupta 