Market Crash Predicted, Occupy Wall Street To Vote On Future This Weekend

September 30th, 2011 - by: danny

September 30: Happy Birthday to mishbukah born on this day: My Brother Bill (and my late Uncle, George Schechter)

Today, Friday at 1 PM, News Dissector Radio on Progressive Radio Danny Schechter speaks with Chuck Slatkin and postal employees about the threat to the survival of the Post Office. In the second half hour, David Degraw, editor of AmpedStatus.com, assesses the Occupy Wall Street protest. Tune in, Call In!

In The Media

RUSSIA TODAY: Mainstream media — watchdog, or lap dancer?

“The mainstream media coverage of the release of the American hikers from Iran has highlighted the decreasing role of the media as a watchdog. Add the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and anti-war protests — is the media doing the Government’s bidding? RT’s Anastasia Churkina reports.

I am also quoted in Spanish in a blog in Cuba.

Obama’s Latest Extra-Judicial Assassination:

Foreign Policy: Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. born Yemeni cleric implicated in numerous high-profile terror plots in the United States, was reportedly killed on Friday morning, according to both Yemeni and U.S. sources. A senior official in Washington said Awlaki had been killed by a hellfire missile fired from an unpiloted drone.

Wall Street’ Bracing for a CRASH

The news from the Wall Street Occupied by the Banksters:

New York Times reports: The stock market may be ahead of the economy. That suggests a crash is more likely than a second recession.

There are many ways to value equity markets. A simple one is to compare an index to nominal gross domestic product. What ratio counts as high is a matter of debate, but 1995 is a good starting point. The Dow Jones industrial average first climbed above 4,000 in February 1995, which was then almost 50 percent above its 1987 peak. It was 38 percent below the level of December 1996, when Alan Greenspan warned of irrational exuberance.

George Soros in the Financial Times:

Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation. They need to regain control and they need to do so now.

LBN reports: Good news for the global economy! U.S. stocks rallied after German Chancellor Angela Merkel passed a huge test Thursday, with the German Parliament voting to expand the EU bailout fund.

Stocks Made A Comeback

The word from Europe:

NYT: Even if Europe Averts Crisis, Growth May Lag for Years

In the best case, a bailout of troubled banks and governments could keep the financial system from experiencing a major shock, though easing the huge debt could take years.

Toward Freedom, Greek Debt is unpayable

NYT: Germany Approves Expansion of Euro Bailout Fund

BERLIN — The vote was also a narrow but significant political victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel, as fewer lawmakers from her own coalition joined the no vote than had been expected.

Dems want Bernanke to Do More:

The Hill: Frank, Dems say Bernanke must do more to help economy

Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) and other Democratic lawmakers say Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should do more to stimulate the economy.

While they have praised “Operation Twist,” the Fed’s latest attempt to spur on lending and reduce unemployment, Democrats said the central bank should be doing much more to expand economic growth.

“I think it’s a good idea but I would have gone further,” Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement to The Hill Wednesday.

Congressman Sherman: “They could do a little bit more twisting, multiply whatever they’re doing by 120 percent or 140 percent. We need to bring down long-term interest rates,” he added.

Soak The Poor!

WP: Bank of America to charge $5 monthly debit fee

The move is part of a wave of changes eroding the low-cost model of banking for consumers.

Energy secretary admits he gave breaks for Solyndra

WP: Steven Chu gave the final nod to a $535 million federal loan and to easing loan requirements when the cash-strapped company couldn’t meet the terms.

The News From the Wall Street Occupied from The People:

RSN: Despite rainy weather, lack of shelter and increasing illness due too exposure, the Wall Street overnight occupiers numbers have grown 33% from 200 on the first day, September 17th to over 300 according to Time Magazine’

Amped Status reports:

The Future Direction Of #OccupyWallStreet To Be Voted On This Weekend

Last night, #OccupyWallStreet’s General Assembly came to a consensus on a timeline to establish a list of demands that the movement will be calling for. On Friday, September 30th, proposals will be made at the General Assembly meeting and through online submissions at OccupyWallSt.org. Throughout the weekend, the proposed demands will be debated and then voted upon. … Read More at Ampedstatus.com. Listen to News Dissector Radio today for an interview with editor David Degraw.

Fluent News: ‘Wall Street protesters target NY cops next’

Some Unions will join, reports Business Insider

According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night.

A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.

Here’s more about them from their website:

The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming;
Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and
Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals
representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22
states around the country.

The Media “Coverage”

Al Jazeera profiled the protests noting that the government has yet to respond. The New York Times noted that a photo of a police supervisor using pepper spray has led to an internal investigation,

FAIR Reports: On ABC World News Sunday (9/25/11), anchor David Muir read this short item while playing footage of cops assaulting protesters:

“And here in New York, protests continued against the big banks and the bailout that helped the banks, Wall Street, they say, not Main Street. It turned ugly this weekend when protesters marching through Lower Manhattan clashed with police. One man right there brought down forcefully by an officer. About 80 people were arrested, in fact. The protesters posted this video on the Internet.

NBC Nightly News aired a somewhat longer report the next day (9/26/11), with correspondent Ron Allen actually traveling downtown to the protest encampment in Liberty Plaza. His report included this “he said, she said”: “The protesters charge that the police used excessive force. The police say that anyone who resists arrest can expect to encounter some level of force, but nothing excessive.” The following morning’s Today show (9/27/11) briefly aired footage of a police official pepper-spraying nonviolent demonstrators in the face, noting that “the NYPD calls the officer’s actions appropriate.”??Some journalists seemed strikingly reluctant to take videotaped evidence of police violence at face value.

CNN anchor Ali Velshi (9/26/11) introduced footage of a police assault by dismissively saying that protesters were “now screaming abuse after they were arrested over the weekend.” After the footage of a cop violently subduing a protester, co-anchor Carol Costello noted, “Of course, what you can’t see is what came before the fight”–a disclaimer that could be made of every single piece of videotape that CNN runs.??

A September 27 New York Times piece (FAIR Blog, 9/28/11) seemed to defend the police force’s brutal response, with reporter Joseph Goldstein depicting a police department concerned about “terrorism” and the “destruction and violence” that supposedly accompany “anticapitalist demonstrations.” Such police worries, according to Goldstein, “came up against a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated”–an oddly passive way to introduce the use of pepper spray and body slams against nonviolent demonstrators.??”Even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department,” Goldstein wrote–though his acceptance of media myths about violent demonstrators (Extra!, 1-2/00, 3-4/00; FAIR Action Alert, 7/25/00) makes the reporter seem less informed than the protesters he patronizes.

Michael Moore paid a return visit to the Park Wednesday night as part of his book tour, and a media appearance on MSNBC.

The rapper Immortal Technique was also there.

NakedCapitalism.com, Comment by Matt Stoller, formerly with Congressman Alan Grayson:

Last weekend, I spent a few days with the protesters downtown near Wall Street, and it was an eye-opening experience. The people there want something, but it’s not a list of demands, and it is entirely overlooked by the media and most commentators on the protest.

If all you read are news stories and twitter feeds about #OccupyWallStreet, the most trenchant imagery that will stick in your mind is that of police brutality, and the politics of Wall Street greed. The debate seems to be organized around whether the protest will be “successful” or not, how the protesters are stupid or a new American Tahrir Square, or rhetoric designed in a media sphere that maximizes attention.

Glenn Greenwald suitably demolishes the sneering commentariat. But I think there’s something to add about what exactly this protest is, what it is doing, and most of all, what the people there “want”. They don’t have a formal list of demands.

And it’s obvious that this isn’t just about Wall Street, nor is it really a battle of any sort. There are political signs there attacking Fox News, expressing anger about Troy Davis, supporting the Iranian revolution, urging the Federal Reserve be reigned in, and demanding rich people pay their taxes. There are personal signs about debt, war, and medical problems. And people are dressed in costume, carrying lightsabers, and some guys are driving around a truck with a “Top Secret Wikileaks” sign on the side. I asked if they were affiliated with the site, and one of them responded with “That’s what the Secret Service asked”. Most of all, people there are having fun.”

Fair?

Other Protests

CLG: Union Airline Pilots Occupy Wall Street

Over 700 hundred Continental and United pilots, joined by additional pilots from other Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) carriers, demonstrate in front of Wall Street on September 27, 2011 in New York City. Hundreds of uniformed pilots, standing in stark contrast to the youthful Occupy Wall Street protesters, staged their own protest outside of Wall Street over the past couple of days, holding signs with the picture of the Hudson river crash asking “What’s a Pilot Worth” and others declaring “Management is Destroying Our Airline.”

News From Boston:

Boston, MA – Over 1,000 people are expected to take to the streets Friday for a march on Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) to rally against Wall Street greed, predatory lending, and skyrocketing foreclosures in urban communities. Bank of America’s recent $8.5 billion dollar settlement with investors has surged foreclosures on distressed homeowners by the nation’s largest financial institution in recent weeks, according to new data from the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac.

This was the largest monthly increase since August 2007, right after the housing bubble had burst. Friday’s march on B of A’s Massachusetts headquarters will be led by Boston residents who are facing foreclosure, and will culminate in a confrontational nonviolent sit-in by over 40 people.

ML-Implode.com, Mandelman: Pain in Spain Sending Banks Down The Drain

Max Wolff says on Huff Post that social media has a lot to do with the protests, Writing on Huntington Post, he notes:

From the Arab Spring through the OECD year of discontent, the web 2.0 generation is using social media to agitate against the status quo. We see parallels between the economic and political changes that are erupting. As the internet has gone social, discontent has gone viral. Clearly, new technologies of communication are not the cause of discontent. They are giving voice to millions and allowing a new disorganized coming together. New movements, like the platforms and apps that are helping them form, are distributed, loose and struggling to find solid foundation.

Other News:

Washington Post: Obama administration escalates crackdown on tough immigration laws

The Obama administration is escalating its crackdown on tough immigration laws, with lawyers reviewing four new state statutes to determine whether the federal government will take the extraordinary step of challenging the measures in court.

Justice Department attorneys have sued Arizona and, where a federal judge on Wednesday allowed key parts of that state’s immigration law to take effect but blocked other provisions. Federal lawyers are talking to Utah officials about a third possible lawsuit and are considering legal challenges in Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina, according to court documents and government officials. The level of federal intervention is highly unusual, legal experts said.

Mitt Romney confuses Winston Churchill with John Maynard Keynes

Letters

Sue M: whats that smell? Could it be an American revolution?

Editorial on Professional Journalists Rejection of Their Award for Helen Thomas

Peter Sussman wrote on an SPJ List:

“As I reflect back on the debate at the convention, I think I hadn’t given enough advance thought to rebutting the emotional venom directed at Helen and her views. As someone once said,”“You can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into.” I thought that journalists would understand free speech and that it was enough to demonstrate that the award retraction was a direct response to Helen Thomas’s expression of her personal views. I believe we would have won were it not for the unanticipated, coordinated blitz against Thomas’s “hate speech,” “racism” and “bigotry.” How do you rebut that kind of blind rage with only reason? Or do you just sling the same shit in their direction? It was a disheartening choice.”

Guardian: Arundhati Roy on Ouster of David Barsamian from India

Matt Rothschild of the Progressive Calls for Letter Writing Campaign for David Barsamian who was ejected from India. Here’s his, send your own:

September 29, 2011

Ambassador Nirupama Rao
The Indian Embassy
2107 Mass. Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20008

Dear Ambassador Rao:

I am writing to register the strongest objection to the treatment that U.S. journalist David Barsamian received upon arriving at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Dehli early in the morning of Sept. 23.

Barsamian, the founder and director of Alternative Radio, was not allowed to get past the immigration desk. He was told he was on some banned list, and was put on the next plane back to the United States.

There is no excuse for not allowing this distinguished journalist to visit your country, as he has many times before. He has interviewed some of your leading intellectuals, including Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, Booker Prize-winner Arundhati Roy, and Right Livelihood Award-winner Vandana Shiva. He has brought their work to the attention of millions of American citizens, thus enhancing the image of your country.

As a nation that boasts of being the world’s largest democracy, India should not be in the business of suppressing free speech and the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to travel.

I urge you to investigate this matter and to lift the ban on this great American journalist.

Sincerely,

Announcement:

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Parties in several states are co-sponsoring
and hosting a ‘No Nukes Tour’ of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, and Florida from Monday, October 3, to Saturday,
October 8.

The No Nukes Tour, with the slogan “Organize the South!”, will feature
Green activist and candidate Howie Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins has been an
organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and
independent politics and against nuclear power since the late 1960s.

t/h Gregory Garvey: Final Treat: Mississippi Fred McDowell “When The Train Comes Along)

I will be back at #Occupy Wall Street tonight after 6.

Your comments Welcome. Write: Dissector@mediachannel.org

The News Dissector