Exclusive: Election 2012 may turn on whether Ronald Reagan’s narrative of evil government and beneficent tax cuts for the rich has finally run its course – and has been replaced by a new narrative demanding government intervention to save the American middle-class, writes Robert Parry.
One week ago, Oakland authorities – citing safety hazards from an “Occupy” encampment – unleashed a predawn police raid to drive the protesters from a plaza. City officials called the action necessary, but a local security guard emerged to tell Dennis Bernstein a very different story.
After the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush’s administration pulled off the shelf dozens of internal security provisions that the Right had long wanted to implement. They were passed as the Patriot Act and have become part of America’s police-state culture, writes Anthony Gregory.
The response to Occupy Wall Street is personal for many participants and visitors alike. For historian William Loren Katz, the iconic protest in Lower Manhattan was a reminder of Depression-era “Hoovervilles” — but with a youthful optimism.
America’s decade-long hysteria since 9/11 has taken on some characteristics of the European witch hunts of 500 years ago, with incineration of targets after a sham “due process,” albeit now with Hellfire missiles from the air not stake-burnings on the ground, as Mary Beaudoin explains.
The Right got what it wanted when Bay Area police stormed the Occupy Oakland encampment touching off clashes that left one protester, Iraq War vet Scott Olsen, in critical condition. Filmmaker Michael Moore discussed the protests with Davey D and Dennis Bernstein.
The mainstream news media still seems baffled by the Occupy protests, wanting them to spell out specific demands – mostly likely, so experts and pundits can then tear the ideas down. So far, the protesters are getting their message across through their simple presence, Danny Schechter reports.
Exclusive: John McCain cheered the brutal slaying of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but the Arizona senator was singing a different tune last decade when Gaddafi was an ally in the “war on terror.” Then, McCain was eager to help Gaddafi strengthen his security apparatus, reports Morgan Strong.
When a Republican is in the White House, the Right is all for military interventions and decries critics as un-American. But now, even a small-scale operation in Africa – encouraged by human rights groups – is denounced by Rush Limbaugh and others, as Michael Winship recounts.
With a few exceptions, the initial reception of the “Occupy” movement across America was fairly benign. But authorities in Oakland and elsewhere are now turning aggressive, sending in police to shut down encampments and disperse protesters, as Phil Rockstroh observes.
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