The consensus over here on the Left is that there is a danger to the Occupy Movement far greater than any amount of pepper spray, mace, tear gas or blunt force trauma that could be dished out by various metropolitan police departments, or any amount of buffoonish insults crapped out by Fox News — and that is the danger of being co-opted by the Democratic Party in the form of its various front groups. On the upside, though, this generation of dissidents seems less likely to fall for Democratic Party snake oil, unlike their older comrades who came out of Seattle/WTO, “A16”, and the early ’00s peace movement.

The Democrats’ co-optation attempts are especially galling in the context of the latest news of the Obama re-election campaign fundraising efforts. They’re continuing the pace set during the ’08 campaign, when the Democrats first surged ahead of the GOP in the amount of campaign cash coming from Wall Street and the banksters.

Not only that, but it’s right out in the open, butt-assed naked, reported on the front page of this past Thursday’s Washington Post. The real “money shot” comes eight paragraphs deep:

Obama’s ties to Wall Street donors could complicate Democratic plans to paint Republicans as puppets of the financial industry, particularly in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have gone global over the past week.

“Could complicate Democratic plans”? No shit, Sherlock.

Of course, this inconvenient truth won’t stop the likes of Michael Moore, the AFL-CIO, MoveOn and the Progressive Democrats Of America from trying to weasel their way in and divert the movement’s energy down the Democratic Electoral Black Hole anyway, because that’s just the way they are — exploitive, manipulative, parasitic, amoral.

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So, a couple of weeks into the Wall Street occupation, I read that Michael Moore and Roseanne Barr had stopped by, and immediately I thought oh, great, here come the goddamn’ celebrities to glom onto the movement. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a little while after that, I read where MoveOn and the Working Families Party had both glommed on at the same time, and my first thought was holy shit, here comes real trouble!

For those of you who’ve been living in a cave for the past decade or so, MoveOn is the liberal astroturf outfit formed in 1999 to shill for Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial for personal malfeasance, under the banal slogan “Censure, And Move On”. Since then, they’ve been responsible for the co-opting, bloodsucking and destruction of more popular peoples’ movements in this country than you can shake a stick at — such as the antiglobalization movement and the peace movement, just to name a couple. Now these vampires have set their sights on the “Occupy” Movement, no doubt claiming all up and down that they’re there to “support” them.

Luckily, most of the folks in the movement are hip to MoveOn’s bullshit, as we can see in the vast majority of comments in this discussion on Facebook:

The other evening, I stuck my head into the bedroom — where my wife was camped in front of the TV, as usual — for a moment, just in time to hear Chris Matthews (aka The Baby Eater) asking if the Occupy Movement could be “harnessed” to help Obama win re-election? Luckily, I hadn’t eaten yet, or else I’d have been projectile vomiting all over the carpet. Seriously, these TV howlers just kill my ass dead. I swear, they couldn’t find a clue with a goddamn’ map. Sometimes I think the news networks could just bring in an ape and let it howl and fling its own shit around the studio for an hour, and it would still be better-informed commentary than that of Baby Eater Matthews.

The Occupy Movement isn’t here to be “harnessed”, it’s here to give a voice to the 99% of the people in this country who’ve lost their homes and jobs, who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families if they do have jobs, and pay most of the taxes while the 1% doesn’t contribute jack shit and gets away with thievery and murder. The Occupy Movement is about social and economic justice and freedom — not about helping to prop up the Democratic Party and re-elect Barack Fucking Obama.

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Continue reading "“Occupy” Movement: Beware the Vampire!" »

Never forget how the State used the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a pretext to shred the Constitution and encourage the escalation of police thuggery against citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 to encourage profiteering in the “defense” and “security” industries at the expense of citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal wars and military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal imprisonment, secret courts and torture.

Never forget that the atmosphere of oppression, suspicion, paranoia and racism which has taken root in this country since September 11, 2001 has been fostered and maintained by both Republican and Democratic governments.

And last, but certainly not least…

Never forget how you, the American people, rolled over and allowed yourselves to be bullied and cowed into silence by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Obama, Ridge, Chertoff, Napolitano, Clinton, and Lieberman while they waged wars of aggression, built a gulag, committed genocide and torture and stripped away your liberty and dignity.

Never forget.
Happy Anniversary

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The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? by Alexander Cockburn at CounterPunch.

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A victory for the Libyan people? D’ah ha ha ha ha ha hah, nahh, I’m just givin’ y’all some shit. Of course not. Gadhafi is claiming that the US, NATO, and their proxy “rebel” armies in Libya are still in for a “long war” and I, for one, hope he’s right — not because I don’t think that Gadhafi is a rat bastard, but because it would mean that Obama and the Cruise Missile Liberals would finally get their very own “Mission Accomplished” albatross hung on them.

Maximilian C. Forte writes in CounterPunch:

Since Colonel Gaddafi has lost his military hold in the war against NATO and the insurgents/rebels/new regime, numerous talking heads have taken to celebrating this war as a “success”. They believe this is a “victory of the Libyan people” and that we should all be celebrating. Others proclaim victory for the “responsibility to protect,” for “humanitarian interventionism,” and condemn the “anti-imperialist left”. Some of those who claim to be “revolutionaries,” or believe they support the “Arab revolution,” somehow find it possible to sideline NATO’s role in the war, instead extolling the democratic virtues of the insurgents, glorifying their martyrdom, and magnifying their role until everything else is pushed from view. I wish to dissent from this circle of acclamation, and remind readers of the role of ideologically-motivated fabrications of “truth” that were used to justify, enable, enhance, and motivate the war against Libya—and to emphasize how damaging the practical effects of those myths have been to Libyans, and to all those who favoured peaceful, non-militarist solutions… >more here.

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