DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/14/2011
The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in the US which started just two weeks ago in the “Big Apple” but already pummeled repeatedly by the New York Police Department with aggressive dispersals, including the arrest of some 800 protesters in one day, have now spread to 847 cities across that country. Protesters see themselves as part of the 99 percent ( i.e. the oppressed majority) versus the 1 percent on top that controls their nation’s wealth by continuously exploiting the system. Their movement calls on the rest of the 99 percent to gather at Wall Street and occupy it, until their government is forced to oust the bankers and investment sharks who have long controlled their country, and to return power to the people.
Despite efforts of US mainstream media to downplay (if not, totally ignore) these protests, such as reporting that only a few cities or a handful of participants have joined, these demonstrations have now spread to 847 cities and are still growing. The movement today even represents the greatest potential for a new American Revolution, much like an “American Autumn” in the vein of the so-called “Arab Spring.”
Autumn, by the way, is also called fall; and some have taken to calling the OWS phenomenon “America’s Fall” — the biggest mass mobilization since the anti-Vietnam War era. It has, in fact, gotten Wall Street “banksters” (banker-gangsters) scared. They have branded the movement as nothing but a “mob.”
Much to their consternation, though, a lot of noteworthy figures — or icons — of anti-capitalist and anti-Federal Reserve movements have already graced the OWS rallies, demonstrations, and “tent cities.”
Oscar winner and film producer of establishment myth-busting works, such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Affair, director Michael Moore, who appeared and spoke at OWS, was earlier heard over radio describing it “literally (as) an uprising of people who have had it… (and it) will continue to spread… (to) tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people… (with a) majority of Americans… really upset at Wall Street... So you have already got an army of Americans who are just waiting for somebody to do something, and something has started.”
Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, said of the OWS: “The frustration seen in the protests on Wall Street over the past few weeks demonstrates a widespread and growing citizen discontent with the two political parties in Washington DC and with a political system that is dominated by corporate interests. It is time for citizens to push their elected officials to break the corporate stranglehold on our economy.”
Major labor unions are joining the OWS, too, from the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union, to the United Federation of Teachers, whose president Michael Mulgrew said, “The way our society is now headed it does not work for 99 percent of people; so when Occupy Wall Street started… they kept to it and they’ve been able to create a national conversation that we think should have been going on for years…”
Another prominent voice that bolstered the OWS protests came from former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. One report (“Dennis Kucinich Tells Occupy Wall Street to Nationalize the Federal Reserve”) quoted the Ohio Democrat as saying, “We need a government of the people and for the people. We need a financial system that is of the people and for the people. It is time we take our nation back and take our monetary system back from the big banks… put the Federal Reserve under the Treasury… end the practice of fractional reserve banking and… take control of our monetary policy and make sure it works for the people. We can use our constitutional authority to coin money and spend it into circulation to put millions of Americans back to work in a way that is non-inflationary. The time for bold change is now.”
The Federal Reserve, or what many mistakenly take as the US central bank, is in fact a private bank controlled by private bankers hiding behind the term, “federal.” The Fed, as it is also called, is where these banksters manipulate the dollar for a handful of US oligarchs.
As one of the main targets of the OWS is to “End the Fed” and restore the power of the state over money, as in the time of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, something very similar must be done here too. And I’m speaking of none other than restoring the Philippines’ 1972 constitutional provision on the Central Bank — removing the word “independent” added on to the 1987 Constitution in order to restore the people’s control over our Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
That has been one of the themes I have pounded on in this two-decade column writing of mine. But, I go further: We must declare money as a public utility; and major decisions such as incurring more borrowings should periodically undergo a people’s referendum.
Actually, the abuse and exploitation of the people by the global finance capitalists (as distinguished from real capitalist-entrepreneurs) is far worse here than in the US. It is therefore time for the Philippines’ own “Winter Storm” (or a “2nd First Quarter Storm” next year).
As I close this column, PressTV has just reported that the Occupy Wall Street protests have already spread to 1,000 US cities. I am thus hoping for a spillover to the Philippines very soon, starting with an “Occupy Malacañang Freedom Park” in the coming weeks against the Epira (Electric Power Industry Reform Act) and its extortionist 15.8-percent power rate pricing scheme, as well as the price gouging on water, the VAT (value added tax) on toll fees and pretty much everything else.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “Occupy Wall Street: Lesson for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
